


Beneficiation

by AngelOfDeath10



Category: Naruto
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Drama, F/M, Romance, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2020-12-24 13:50:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21100502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelOfDeath10/pseuds/AngelOfDeath10
Summary: Gaara is a gentleman of self-sufficiency so when he finds himself in a dire situation, help comes from an unlikely quarter. Sakura had thought she would die a pitiful death, but instead swears herself in service to the man who provides her aid. Together they must navigate an era of change and the pull of revenge, among other raw emotions.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Started in 2019. Current project.
> 
> Disclaimer: As always, Naruto is owned by someone else. And that person didn't know how to end it right so this is where we find ourselves.

The how and why was unimportant at this point. Gaara's father, before his passing, had been contracting the services of this Dr. Orochimaru with the nebulous promise of some sort of serum that would allow the slaves in the mines to work longer and harder. As Kankuro had pointed out while filing yet another ledger of numbers onto a shelf, Gaara had a responsibility to inquire into the state of the investment. The board of directors needed transparency, and this was one very costly black hole they had been throwing money into that hadn't turned up much in the way of real results. A few cases of modified amphetamines, or so it seemed, and the promise of more and better if he could please just have a little more time wasn't enough to secure continued funding.

The wave of the future was emancipation and how they were going to get the same results from freedmen was a concern when presumably there would be labor laws to guide the number of hours they worked in a day, let alone the compensation that they would need to be provided. The directors were fighting their own political battles; Gaara had no particular interest in owning human beings. That he owned hundreds of them was more of a logistical inconvenience than anything. He would just as soon pay freedmen and then send them back to homes he didn't maintain or to eat food he didn't pay for and receive medical treatment he didn't arrange. He hadn't inherited a company; he had inherited a small city. It seemed impossible to extricate himself at this juncture.

Sasori, a distant cousin and one of Gaara's least favorite board members, had taken it on himself to send barbed notes to Gaara reminding him that while he might have the same earth affinity of his father that a little preternatural ability couldn't make up for real leadership. Temari, who intercepted everyone's correspondence and read it before they did out of boredom had been shredding the lawn with how vigorously she had been playing croquet to relax. The way she swung a mallet was more than a little menacing. Their family's continued success was laid at Gaara's feet and he well knew that neither of his older siblings thought he was going to be able to take Suna Mining Co. into continued future prosperity. They probably would have smothered him in his sleep and run the business themselves if not for his uncanny ability to sense rare minerals and guide the crews to valuable deposits. Kankuro would have given his right eye for that ability and an iota of their father's attention.

As the carriage rocked back and forth on the path into the manor where Dr. Orochimaru based his operations, Gaara was pretty sure Kankuro had paid extra for the coachman to go slightly too fast and shake him into sickness. Anything that resembled a boat on water was detestable. Clammy hands smoothed down grey pinstripe pants and Gaara closed his eyes, steeling himself for what was no doubt going to be an awkward visit. Kankuro was the sociable one, why he had declined to visit this doctor was at first mysterious then became all too clear as the foreboding mansion came into view. No doubt Kankuro had been here with their father once before and wanted no part of what lay inside.

That didn't tell Gaara much. Kankuro didn't have stomach for anything that got more gruesome than a spilled inkwell. As soon as Gaara was old enough to visit foremen at the mine with their father, Kankuro had stopped going. The stench and the misery had been too much for someone with so much human empathy. Gaara wondered if he were missing something inside of him, some finer emotion that allowed him to connect to other humans. He remembered his father's look of pride when a barely ten-year-old Gaara didn't look away from a foreman beating a man for insolence the first visit they took together. He couldn't have looked away if he had tried, finding the blood too fascinating, but his father had taken his fixation for strength. Perhaps it was strength, but it had come to feel more like numbness. Objectively, he knew that was a negative quality in a gentleman.

Whatever humanity Gaara had been meant to gain had probably died with his mother at his birth.

Straightening his black frock coat and smoothing down his crimson waistcoat, Gaara fetched his hat from the seat across from him and ran his fingers through his hair a few times to create the illusion of order. Pulling a watch from his waistcoat, he felt the heavy gold in his hand and wondered why people thought something so precious that was so soft. Gaara didn't have time in his life for soft things, but the watch had been his father's and it was difficult to discard it. It reminded him of his responsibility more so than Kankuro's fretting or Temari's snide remarks.

"Mr. Sabaku," As soon as the carriage stopped and the door opened, a man that looked young but for his shoulder length slate grey hair was there with a cheerful smile to greet him. Neatly dressed, there was a sickly sweet chemical smell that clung to him. "My name is Mr. Yakushi, and I'm Dr. Orochimaru's assistant. I trust your journey was uneventful? I understand that the weather was acceptable since you left."

The five days of travel were boring indeed, particularly without Kankuro and Temari jabbing at one another, but the silence had been restful. Not that his sleep had been any better, just a few hours of restless tossing as per usual each night. Often, he wondered why he tried to sleep at all. The dark bags under his green eyes often gave people pause, though the people that were around him had stopped asking him if he were tired since he exited childhood. They didn't question the state of his health so long as he kept rising each day to perform his duties.

"My journey was adequate." Gaara said tersely and shook the man's hand. Having been forced by his father to practice this skill, he noted how the man didn't fully grip and instead slipped out of the hold immediately. It was the habit of a person who didn't spend much time greeting company, or who didn't like the touch of another human being. He could relate to that much at least. "When shall I meet with the doctor?"

"No need to rush such things, Dr. Orochimaru would like it if you took time to relax and perhaps take a meal prior to touring the laboratory. We're not often graced with so illustrious a guest." His smile was wide and toothsome, but Gaara didn't return it. The sycophantic words and off-putting presence of the man made Gaara wish he could turn around and climb back into the carriage, but he had a job to do here and it wasn't the first time he'd wished someone would disappear. Nor would it be the last, he supposed.

The pause lingered too long in the air and Gaara wondered if the man was expecting him to carry the conversation. He had nothing to say to this Mr. Yakushi. Trusting that his luggage would be seen to, Gaara strode towards the open doors of the mansion and brooded over the problem of why a man of science would base himself so far from civilizations and all the tools and ease of commerce. Surely a legitimate doctor would be working in a university, or other equally visible practice. Gaara knew his father had some shady connections, but few seemed shadier than this supposed doctor.

***

Gaara had a headache. The interminably pleasant Mr. Yakushi had insisted on entertaining Gaara for hours in the library, talking about the brilliance of his master and their theories on how various affinities could be amplified when people were exposed to appropriate stressors. Then, as if to encourage Gaara into a display of his own earth affinity, he showed how with great concentration he had been able to turn his own water affinity into a very small cutting tool at the end of his index finger. Gaara thought the effort needed to generate the small water knife was probably not worth the trouble given how cheap blades of all kinds were but at least the line of inquiry wasn't totally without merit. The limits of the human body would be the kind of thing that would need to be explored to be able to extend them: the ultimate goal his father had stated in the original contract with the doctor. He didn't disagree with it in theory.

When food had arrived, Gaara had declined, still feeling somewhat ill after five days of a rocking carriage. Not long after the food was taken away at last the doctor made his appearance. He was tall and neatly dressed, with long black hair drawn back by a simple leather strap. Gaara was pale, but this man was practically white his complexion was so chalky. As Gaara stood to shake his hand, as social protocol dictated, the handshake was textbook. This was a man who studied others, who knew how to pretend to be human. The urge to leave increased, and Gaara wished he could trust his instincts but he knew leaving with his investment unexamined was the same as handing the company and all the people who tended the mine to Sasori.

Gaara had had to fire the last two foremen who had been recommended by Sasori for being too heavy handed with their punishments towards the workers. He may have been deficient in human feeling, but Sasori seemed to delight in his lack, and encouraged similar abandonment in others. No, leaving the company to Sasori was not an option as his mismanagement would drive them out of business more surely than Gaara's supposed weak leadership.

"Mr. Sabaku, it's a pleasure to receive you. I held your late father in high regard."

But not enough to attend his funeral, Gaara noted silently to himself. "Your business with him spanned a decade. I'm here to determine if it's in the Suna Mining Company's best interest to continue the partnership."

"I see Kabuto was not able to tempt you to relax and enjoy some refreshments, I would have thought visiting the labs too much after so long a journey." His words were light, but his golden eyes narrowed ever so slightly in Mr. Yakushi's direction and Gaara's keen glance saw the assistant flinch ever so slightly.

Gaara was largely uninterested in their domestic drama, but he was hearing deep reluctance to take him to the lab. That only made him want to see it all the more. "I assure you my constitution is hardier than appearance would have it seem. You can start your tour."

The request couched in an order didn't phase the doctor, but his assistant seemed to shift his weight from foot to foot even as his expression remained placid. Dr. Orochimaru smiled and led the way out of the library and into the hallway. They ended up at a door near the kitchens with an elaborate lock on the front that Gaara examined with some interest before Mr. Yakushi produced a key with rather interesting tines to it. It looked more like sculpture than a key. There would be no easy access for the curious to this laboratory.

"It used to be a vast wine cellar and storage space when I purchased the property some years ago," Dr. Orochimaru said conversationally. "It was one of the main draws of the property. Since then I have added ventilation and additional rooms, so you'll find the space quite comfortable despite being subterranean."

They walked single file down a set of stairs to another door, this one had a bolt on the outside that was not engaged. What would a man like Orochimaru need to lock inside the lab?

***

Falling asleep was all too easy that night, which was Gaara's first clue he had been drugged. His eyelids were already drooping as he spread the fine layer of sand around the room—a method that had traditionally acted as his early warning system for intruders. His earth affinity had given him senses beyond his normal human ones, and he had learned some interesting applications for it with the sand on the flooring simply being one of the easiest to maintain while not at home. If someone crossed the threshold onto his sand he would feel their presence, and it was as effective as an alarm due to his restless sleeping patterns. Not that it would do him much good this evening, he realized with more irritation than alarm. He had made his displeasure too plain, and Dr. Orochimaru didn't seem one to mince around when action could be taken.

After the tour of the lab earlier Gaara had needed a drink, a strong one, and it would have been all too easy to slip something in his spirits. He had thought drinking from the same decanter would have provided some assurance, but in hindsight a bit of slight of hand would have been easily missed given the shocking nature of the doctor's work. Gaara wasn't easily shaken, but there were things in that modified cellar that implied dark religion in addition to callous experimentation on live subjects of various species. It was as he was thinking about the conversation he'd had with Mr. Yakushi about stressors and the clearly frightened caged animals sparked feeling deep in him that the men he accompanied weren't merely amoral for scientific purposes, there was a strong inclination for actual evil here. A caged raccoon hissed at them as they passed, and Gaara rather sided with it over his hosts.

Symbols drawn on the walls and on a cleared spot on the floor reminded Gaara of something he had read about in a book once, but he had dismissed it as the ravings of a lunatic. Otherworldly beings, should such things exist, probably had no interest in the problems of humans. And should their attention be secured it was more likely such a being would tear the wings off the metaphorical fly that was buzzing around it than to grant it wishes. Dr. Orochimaru was not only dangerous, he was most likely insane if he was mixing his science with the occult.

It was all such a waste, when clearly the man was also brilliant. The machinery that he was employing in his lab looked expensive and well kept. There was a half-completed automaton in a corner, a rarity in of itself. Gaara's father had looked into automatons for a time but had quickly come to the realization that a robotic workforce would require too much work to maintain and that the initial expense to have them created would have been astronomical. Human beings were much cheaper in every form, and actually required less resource to keep going than a being of metal and wires. Perhaps in time the cost would reduce, but not in his lifetime Gaara supposed. When Gaara had inquired into if the doctor was interested in the engineering of automatons, the assistant had replied vaguely about how the doctor was doing everything in his power to understand the limits of physiology. Perhaps it was Gaara's continued lack of approval or enthusiasm that convinced the scientists that he needed to be disposed of, but again that made no sense. Nothing about the situation made sense. He was too high profile to go unnoticed. There would need to be accomplices that had assured the scientists that without Gaara the flow of money would continue unabated.

Waking up with severe vertigo and a headache in the damp laboratory surprised Gaara only insofar as he was still alive. Perhaps the dosage he had received was lower than they suspected, or he had metabolized it too quickly. All he knew is it was a chore to stand, so he crawled on hands and knees in the pitch black until he found a wall. Clad only in his nightshirt, he shivered from both the effect of the drug and the extreme cold. Eventually, following the wall brought him to a metal door.

Conjuring up the memory of Mr. Yakushi's water blade, Gaara wondered if he had enough willpower to call his earth to him. It was a trick he had managed a few times on his own through great concentration and everything about him felt sluggish. Luckily for him, the scientists were not keen on cleanliness because he had handfuls of dirt after gathering his wits about him a few times. Slowly it began taking form and maybe if he hadn't been around drilling equipment his entire life he might have struggled with the particulars, but the only challenge he realized he had as the dirt condensed and hardened in his palm was that he would have to expend energy every rotation. It didn't take long to find the key hole, but every agonizing moment he drilled made his head throb. The grinding of the drill against metal was almost soothing in how it took him back to the sound of boring rock tunnels.

After what could have been an hour or more he had demolished the delicate guts of the locking mechanism and it took much less force to have his dirt push the metal bolt in and allow the door to swing free. He collapsed onto the floor once the door no longer supported his weight, and took a moment to retch after so much mental and physical toil. There was nothing in his stomach but bile, and he wished he could say the vile taste brought him back to his senses but the world still swam even in near darkness. Burners left on low underneath glass beakers provided low light to the large space. Gaara hadn't spared a second glance to the back of the room on first tour, but there was a whole line of cells including his own.

"I don't know how you got out, but you won't make it far in that condition." Gaara made out the dim outline shifting in its cell through the bars that lay at head height. A pale, filthy hand grasped a bar suddenly, and Gaara would have startled if he were not feeling so ill. "Free me and I can heal you."

He might not have laughed even if he had the energy, but he did feel his mouth quirk up slightly. Even if he had the strength, another person would only increase the liability of his escape. It was already tenuous at best. Gaara glanced at the hand, vision swimming, and turned away to begin to drag his body towards what he thought was the exit of this hell.

"I can prove it, if you just touch my fingers." The voice was hoarse, desperate. "_Please_."

Gaara spent a moment considering what he had to lose by humoring this strange companion in captivity. He already understood he was more likely better served finding a sharp tool to end his own life before he was recaptured and dissected like those raccoons and primates the doctor kept. Lurching over, falling to one knee briefly before righting himself again, Gaara grabbed one of the bars of the prisoner's cell and he saw the hand pull back just as suddenly. Another dry heave was threatening, but then frigid fingers touched his own and he felt like everything came into sudden focus for a moment. There was a sense of foreignness, like something was deeply wrong with his body but then he was back to the generalized sick feeling he had been combatting since he awoke.

"They poisoned you… I can only deal with that if we're face to face."

Convenient. Gaara snorted, clearly incredulous.

"Your other hand is bleeding from the palm, like something stripped off the skin in the center. I can heal that from here as proof."

The voice wasn't wrong. He had gotten sloppy towards the end of drilling his door out and his hand was a bloody mess. The stinging was nothing compared to the sickness roiling his mind and body so he had easily ignored it. He had come this far, though, and the stranger had known even though there was no way he could have possibly seen, that Gaara's hand was injured.

After holding his injured palm to the bars, he felt a soothing coolness that started with a sting and ended with a crash on the other side of the cell door. The man had collapsed, but he had also healed Gaara's palm as promised. It seemed like there might be some utility to freeing the person after all.

"You'll take the poison from my body?" Gaara said to the cell door.

"Yes, I swear it." The voice was small, still in a heap on the floor no doubt. "Anything. As long as you need me. Just get me out."

Gaara found the sad puddle of dust he had left near the door of his own cell and reformed it through sheer grit into a drill again. Now that he knew how, he was pretty sure he could accomplish his task faster this time.

The only sounds as he worked were the grinding of metal and slight groans from the prisoner.


	2. Chapter 2

With a crack, the lock finally disengaged and the door swung open on its own to reveal the slumped form of the healer. Gaara, preoccupied with his own sickness, still felt a flush of irritation that the man couldn't at least have the decency to make himself ready considering how much effort he had expended convincing Gaara of his usefulness in this escape attempt.

A mop of hair matted with grease and dirt stirred and the gaunt face looked up at him wearily, but with hope. At least one of them still thought this was a good idea.

"Get up." Gaara neither offered a hand nor directed a kick at the slowly moving form of the other prisoner. He was in what looked to be a horribly stained and torn nightshirt and judging by the potent smell he had been in it for some time without much access to soap and water. Gaara suppressed the urge to retch again.

There was a scraping noise and as he stood at last Gaara noted that his right arm was encased in the most unusual armored device. It hyperextended his armored arm, screws preventing the elbow from bending or the fingers from flexing. The heaviness of it was causing him to lean awkwardly to the side.

"If you please, I haven't the strength to release the mechanism that holds the screws in place. There's some sort of lever behind me…" He turned around and Gaara saw that there was something that would take a few twists but would probably allow the individual screws to then be loosened or tightened as a group. Without the armor on the arm, this would appear to be a torture device.

"Sit again so that when it releases it doesn't make unnecessary noise." The man responded to Gaara direction by folding down on shaky legs. Gaara blinked back spots, his own vision swimming as he employed some steadying force from his handful of dirt so that every crank did not reverse itself due to his unsteady grip. Eventually the device lost enough tension that the man could pull his arm free. The armor did not come off with it, and Gaara made no move to help in that regard.

"I can never thank you enough."

Gaara sneered, clutching at his throbbing head. "Save your thanks for if we live."

His mouth quirked, even if he also gave a snort of irritation at Gaara's harsh words. "I made you a promise, and I can extract the poison from you, but it will weaken me further. Without that extra weight I can follow you at pace, but unless you can find me a gallon of clean water I won't have much offensive capability."

Water affinity, he had assumed as they were the only ones who possessed fringe healing benefits. Even so, if water affinity was uncommon, the ability to heal was an even rarer subset. It was like finding a unicorn in the wild.

"Just so you know," the man said, the hoarse voice seemingly pitched higher from discomfort. "This isn't personal."

Grabbing him by the collar, Gaara was drawn forward by the man and chapped lips met his own. He could taste the coppery blood that had crusted on the other prisoner's mouth, but before he could conjure the strength to pull away after the shock of the action wore off he felt the world tilt again as it had when the healer had performed the analysis of his body. It was like a tide was ebbing and flowing inside of his own body and a bitter liquid passed through his lips and into the mouth of the man.

They broke apart and Gaara felt at once mostly clear-headed. His stomach no longer felt like it was flopping about in his body, merely a slight tinge of queasiness. The only thing that seemed to trouble him was a desperate thirst he hadn't had previously. The man instead was clutching at his head, eyes punched shut.

"They keep me dehydrated so I had to take a bit of extra water, not so much to damage your organs." The voice was less hoarse now. "I'll be able to neutralize the poison better in my own body. Orochimaru surely loves mixing his cocktails…"

Maybe the stranger felt the need to talk after who knew how long trapped underground with nothing but his captors for company, but Gaara wasn't interested in a chat and strode forward to where the burners provided light. He was looking for a weapon and settled on the heavy wrench lying near the automaton. The other man gave the inert machine a peculiar glance, and then located a bioluminescent stick that once unsheathed bathed the lab in soft blue light.

"Better than an oil lamp in a pinch," the man said, and Gaara nodded even if he would have preferred the slight man also locate a weapon. Then again, the way he was swaying on his feet, Gaara didn't particularly think him able to swing anything and stay standing. "You have a plan, yes? We're not merely marching upstairs and into uncertainty, I hope?"

Gaara didn't really have a plan, but he wasn't about to project weakness to his companion. "I noticed they did not throw the bolt to the second door. I will drill out the lock to the top door and we will locate my carriage."

"Then what, we drive nearly naked through the countryside and hope we aren't hunted by law enforcement and placed in an asylum? We have no identification. No clothes. No credibility. Orochimaru will find us or employ his men to find us."

His men? There were only a few servants in this household, a handful of gangly teens, and Gaara didn't consider them a threat. Gaara leveled a stare at the other man until he fidgeted and looked down at the floor.

"Put away the light, I don't need it for this work." Gaara moved towards the door and allowed his eyes to readjust to the lower light now that the blue glow was gone. "Stay close and don't make any noise."

The other man sighed and followed, their bare feet padding softly on the cold stone in tandem.

***

Sakura slumped over in the carriage and flexed her right hand over and over, watching the metallic joints slide over one another as if oiled. It was a dull bronze in the beginnings of twilight, almost pretty if one had a certain mechanical bent. Inside of her, she sent the silent signals to her cells to process the drugs that she had removed from the other man's body. Her body burned feverishly as it worked triple time to do what it would have accomplished naturally over the course of maybe half a day. They hadn't dosed him with enough to kill him, obviously, but they had not spared him from a mix of chemicals that would have laid out a less fortified man. Kabuto may have been experimenting with something new, as she hadn't such trouble with a concoction in some time. They had seemingly tried out everything on her body first, so she could say with certainty they had gotten creative with this one. It spoke of lack of planning on their part; a hasty decision.

The man, against all reason, had said he was heading back in for a change of clothes and a small case of valuables. He had pointed out there wasn't anyone in the house awake yet and they couldn't, as she had pointed out, drive across the country naked and without identification. Or at least he didn't have to in this circumstance. The risk seemed too great to her, but he no more listened to her than a voice on the wind. Sakura got the feeling like he was the sort of person who gave orders rather than listened to them. At least he kept the wrench with him.

Despite the adrenaline and the feverish heat in her body, Sakura wished she could sleep now that for the first time in months she wasn't under threat of bodily harm. In fact, once she was fed and rehydrated properly she might even feel human again. Looking again at her arm in the strengthening morning light, she shook her head. No, maybe cosmetic changes wouldn't be enough in fact to make her feel human.

Time passed quickly, as Sakura had gotten used to waiting with a blank mind in the long months of captivity. Discovering upon exiting that the earth smelled of fall was a shock. So much time lost to twisted experiments, but the less she thought about that the better. She was not the same person who had been pulled out of that broken carriage in spring. There was the soft whickering of horses and the shifting of weight on the ceiling above. Then, a well-dressed gentleman she barely recognized but for the distinctive rust red of his hair entered and slammed the door. With a lurch, they moved forward.

"But… how?"

"The driver was sleeping in the carriage house. I woke him up before I went back into the main residence and told him I needed to leave immediately." He was stuffing his shirt into his pants, waistcoat yet unbuttoned.

It all seemed too easy! This man who should have shared her fate simply walks out the door, taking her with him? This threatened to crack her sanity in a way that the physical torture she had endured had not. Was it because they had the advantage of surprise? No way would Orochimaru or Kabuto expect them to be walking about. The idea that they were still asleep worked at cross purposes with her perception of them awake at all hours. Sakura's perception of time had been truly warped in that lightless basement. As her body began to involuntarily shake, memories overwhelming, clothes were tossed at her from where the man sat.

"Get dressed, you look like a madman," Everything was too big for her, but it was clean. What was more curious was the knowledge that the man assumed she too was male. Clarification at this time would only cause them both discomfort on the trip. Sakura had no backup plan. "Once you bathe you might pass as a valet."

She pulled on the high waisted pants first; there were no suspenders but as they were tailored to the other man's form her hips were sufficient to keep them from falling. If she had not been starved for so long she would not have been slim enough to put them on, she noted coldly while feeling her left hand brush over jutting hip bones. Turning around, she shrugged out of the dirty nightshirt she had lived in for unknown months and with shaking fingers she put on the shirt and vest. Her right hand caused her some trouble, as she had to take special care not to pop the buttons. There was a time, she thought, when she would have refused to show as much as an ankle around a man she didn't know, but this gentleman could count her ribs in this moment and she didn't so much as blush. The ankle boots were overlarge and there were no socks to go with them, but once she pulled on the waistcoat she probably looked close enough to respectable that if no one looked too hard to smelled too keenly she might pass.

Sweat would have poured down her back if she had had the water to spare, instead her body felt overheated and her head spun.

In the silence Sakura expected the deluge of questions to begin. How she had arrived, what had happened, who she had been before and where she expected to go next… but the silence stretched into the morning as they passed the line of trees that marked the edge of Orochimaru's property and turned onto the main road.

"What's your name?" that she was the one that had to ask was a wonder. The man was lost in his own thoughts. Bloodshot green eyes scanned her and narrowed. She wasn't going to pass muster as a valet it seemed.

"Sabaku." He answered simply.

When it seemed like he wasn't going to supply more, Sakura probed. "First or last?"

That actually got a hint of a smile. "Family name."

"Haruno," Sakura supplied in kind. Then in a small voice she continued. "I don't think I'll ever be able to repay what you've done for me today."

The man didn't say anything, and Sakura wondered if he hadn't heard her over the clatter of hoofbeats and the creaking of the coach. But then Mr. Sabaku suddenly replied. "We both played our part. Once we locate a mechanic to remove your armor then feel free to dissolve our association."

Bless him, he thought it was removable.

"As you will it." Sakura had sworn to stay with him until she was no longer needed and she had meant it, so she would allow him to guide the way. Hasty words, but she'd die by them or live by them as this Mr. Sabaku desired. They continued on in silence again, Sakura content to get real sleep for the first time in ages while her body burned out the poison.

***

The first reasonable stop, which Gaara insisted on as the coachman's shaky pace was irritating his stomach more than usual due to the lingering effects of the drugs, was a small village that contained little more than an inn and a few houses. The only mechanic in town seemed to be a hobbiest who specialized in nothing more complex than basic pneumatics so Gaara abandoned the possibility of removing Mr. Haruno's armor for the afternoon and instead ordered meals and a bath for the room. The rough looking man who ran the inn gave both Gaara and Mr. Haruno a funny look until Mr. Haruno spoke up with a shaky voice.

"Mr. Sabaku's luggage was lost to a carriage accident. We'll need additional clothes if they can be obtained."

Gaara didn't give a damn what some random man thought of him or his state of dress, but it seemed this Haruno fellow was sensitive to the scrutiny of others. Perhaps the time in Orochimaru's 'care' hadn't damaged his social senses irredeemably, which said a lot of the smaller man's strength of character.

"It's simple cottage pie, if yer master can stomach it." The man said. "My wife'll turn on the pipes and fetch the bath but it'll take a while for the heater to get goin'."

"Compensation will not be a problem for your troubles," Mr. Haruno said, glancing over at Gaara to make sure he hadn't spoken out of turn but Gaara gave a reassuring nod which put the man more at ease.

"S'not the first time I've heard of carriage accidents in that direction. Treacherous bit of road near the forest ravine. Claimed more lives than bodies recovered. Yer bags are most likely gone fer good." The man shook his head sadly and handed Haruno the keys to their rooms, and his new valet clutched them as if they were a lifeline. Gaara supposed it was the first normal interaction with a person the man had had for some time, and frankly he was also happy not to have to put himself out. Perhaps having a valet was something he should have done for himself ages ago, even if the circumstances of securing Haruno were unpleasant in origin. Maybe if the man had nothing else going for him…

It was an uncharacteristic turn of thought. This weakness of character is why Sasori wanted him ousted from his position. If he had been in Sasori's position he would have seen the point. Other people's troubles weren't his concern and this Haruno fellow looked like he'd shatter at the first bit of kindness showed to him. Inviting such a man to his household was like waving a red flag in front of Sasori.

The cottage pie and the tea showed up first, given the hot water heater was still working, and Gaara watched Haruno physically tremble as his eyes followed the meal. Once the woman retreated to fetch the bathtub, the smaller man didn't wait for a signal and attacked the fare like an animal. Guzzling tea, spooning mouthfuls of hot pie into his mouth, he was only stopped when it all hit his stomach and he clearly realized the lack of wisdom in stuffing yourself on a perennially empty stomach. To his credit, he kept it all down, but after the initial rush he seemed to keep to sips of tea.

"Not eating?" Haruno asked, wiping stray gravy from his mouth with a thumb. Gaara felt a pang of something run through him as he remembered the forcible kiss that they had engaged in last night. _Not personal_, the man had said, and Gaara tried to imagine another day and another kiss and came up empty. It surely wasn't his first kiss, but it was the last one he had any memory of.

"I'm not fond of food. Even under ideal circumstances."

"So you're skinny from habit not nature, I suppose." The man smiled, and Gaara wondered if he should be offended when the thin copper bath appeared in the doorway and Haruno's mood shuttered back to professional and remote. It was how he should have been acting from the start but Gaara felt greater irritation at the withdrawal then at his familiarity.

The woman set up the tub next to the pipes that were freestanding to the side of the room near the window and as she turned the knobs steaming water poured into it. "Soap's extra. But I 'spect you'll be wantin' it." The woman said, eyes roving over Haruno's messy appearance. She left a bar of rough looking homemade on a small table next to the windowsill and withdrew with a minimal curtsy.

"Go ahead," Gaara said as Haruno stared at the bath like it was a death sentence.

"I… can't while you're here." He volunteered at last, like it pained him to say.

Gaara wasn't about the leave the room, having nowhere else to go and being tired from an unpleasant night swiftly followed by a less but still unpleasant carriage ride. He poured himself a cup of tea and retreated to the bed, where he sat with his back facing the man. No words were needed, clearly Haruno could bathe under these circumstances or not as he deemed fit.

From the sounds of water sloshing about a moment later, he made the right decision quickly enough. Gaara finished his tea and stared at the wall while contemplating what next steps made sense in the context of this attack. First order of business would be to send a missive to return his personal effects immediately, second would be to formally dissolve the contract. The third course of action would take more time, but professionally crushing someone took more than a few letters. This Orochimaru fellow clearly thought he was untouchable in his fortress-like manor to make so bold a move, but Gaara wasn't about to let an attack like this go unanswered.

In a sense he was grateful to the damned doctor, because how else except through an application of an extreme stressor, as that assistant had put it, would Gaara have realized how far his own powers could stretch. What else could his earth affinity accomplish given a bit of push?

"Shit!" there was a curse and a clatter, and Gaara turned his head slightly on instinct to see Haruno reaching out of the bath for the dropped soap on the floorboards.

Their eyes grazed briefly before Haruno dropped into the water up to her ears and Gaara's eyes snapped back to the wall.

Even starved near to the bone there was no mistaking the form that had been illuminated in silhouette by the late afternoon sunlight.

"My name is Gaara," he supplied to the suddenly heavy atmosphere in the room.

"…Sakura…" Haruno supplied in a shaky voice.

Gaara sighed.


	3. Chapter 3

Sakura watched Gaara visibly struggle with the new reality her little mishap with the soap had thrust upon them. A moment earlier she had been an inconvenient travelling companion, a fellow escapee, perhaps an object of pity, and now she was an unaccompanied and abused female. Every sense of protocol was breached by her existing in his presence without escort and underdressed. Her now much cleaner petal pink hair dripped onto her shoulders from the uneven slash it had been cut at months ago, and she wished the ruse could have lasted bit longer even as she was a tad angry she had been able to fool him at all. Maybe if her hair had still been long, down to her waist and shining with health, it would have provided more of a clue than her voice or her face had. But then again, she had been coated in filth and starved to formlessness. She had also readily accepted the relative freedom of a mistaken identity.

"Inform me when you've finished your _ablution_." He said it with more stern a tone than Sakura would have liked. Gaara was clearly displeased with the turn of events.

Sakura glanced down at her right arm, wondering if soap did anything to the material or if she would be forced to find some sort of polish for it in the future. It was a largely unknown quantity in her mind still, as if it were a phantom limb. All she knew was what kept it attached to her was unholy power. No true feeling was in it, merely the sense of pressure against the metal. Rising out of the water too hastily, she saw indents where her metal fingers had grasped the side of the copper tub too tightly. Sakura grimaced at her mistake. With food and rest strength was returning to her body. This was exactly what Orochimaru had hoped and feared as an outcome.

There was no towel so she put her borrowed clothes back on wet. "I'll have to continue to wear what you provided me, I don't have anything else I could use and I don't suppose either of us wants to go down and ask for a dress at this point in time…"

There was a snort from the man still facing the wall, so at least her attempt at humor wasn't entirely lost on him.

"Please, I just want you to know that I didn't mean any deception from the start. I didn't even realize you thought me a man until after we had… left." Sakura didn't want to mention Orochimaru more than necessary. She didn't want to think on the weeks of poisonings, the injuries she had been given to test her self-healing abilities, or the last most drastic experiment that had started with the amputation of her arm and ended in leaving her part automaton. "The last thing I would want is to make you uncomfortable."

The words that came back at her were like a whip. "My comfort is hardly a concern. My life is fully complicated enough without the implication of emotional or physical attachment."

That sounded, frankly, _sad_. She buttoned the shirt too hastily and popped the top button with a careless application of pressure from her right hand. It landed softly in front of her. Blasted thing! "Damnation! You can turn around now, I'm decent enough."

Gaara did indeed turn around and color suffused his face anyway before his eyes went from wide to steely. Sakura snapped up the borrowed waistcoat from the ground, but didn't put it on yet. She didn't trust herself not to pop more buttons in the emotional state she was in.

"If you're wondering if I have family that will create a scene regarding our association, you needn't worry. I only have one brother and he's been at sea with the navy since he was eighteen. I'd be shocked if news of my death had even reached him yet. I can come up with an acceptable story if you wish to abandon me at the nearest city. If you lent me enough money for a train ticket and a new set of clothes you can be well shot of me before the week is out."

Crossing his arms, giving Sakura a grim condescending look, Gaara seemed to consider her words. "It's a technically expedient suggestion," The 'but' hung in the air, however Gaara didn't look like he was going to say more. Clearly, he didn't want to be responsible for a random woman's well being but he also didn't like the idea of releasing her to her own devices. "For the moment we're stuck with one another until we reach a city."

"Maybe before then at the very least you could secure me some socks? With thick enough socks I should be able to borrow your shoes more easily. As it is they nearly fall from my foot with each step." Sakura tried to offer a smile which Gaara pointedly did not return.

Glancing at her metallic hand, Gaara finally added, "And perhaps a pair of gloves as well," which Sakura took as an acknowledgement that he would both buy her socks and continue to tolerate the situation where she would pose as his valet. It was certainly much less trouble than securing a dress and pretending anything else.

With one last speculative look, Gaara finally stood from his seat on the bed and got another cup of tea. It was stone cold by this time but he didn't appear to care as he drained the cup quickly. Sakura busied herself with using the pneumatic hose next to the water spigots to drain the tub of waste water. She guessed correctly that Gaara wasn't about to take a bath, and she swiftly placed the tub outside the door for pickup before turning back in to find Gaara staring out the window pensively with yet another cup of tea in his hand. Clouds were rolling in, making the afternoon much darker than it should have been.

"You'll never sleep if you drink so much tea," She chided him lightly, wishing she could regain the quiet acceptance he had seemed to regard her with when she was Mr. Haruno.

"I hardly sleep at all."

Sakura came back to the half-eaten cottage pie and took a few more bites. Knowing she could forcibly metabolize the caffeine she drank her own additional cup of tea as well. The precious liquid was helping rehydrate her, and she would probably ask for at the very least another pot of tea before bed.

"Sounds to me like you could use a healer, then. I know several very good ones. Or you could always let me—"

Gaara interrupted her. "It doesn't affect me negatively. I find I'm more productive than most people as a result."

"I suppose there's an upside to just about everything." Sakura smiled at Gaara's back and then looked down at her hand.

Just about everything.

***

Given their altered circumstances, Gaara was shocked when the woman requested to sleep in the same room as him. She had insisted she would be fine curled up in a corner once she secured the blankets from her own room, but she was most insistent that a night alone in a dark space wasn't something she wanted to tolerate. While rather fierce in her insistence, it was the uncanny hollowness in her eyes that really convinced him. Whatever horrors had visited her in the doctor's home had left internal scars, despite the lack of visible external ones. He supposed her healing abilities had contributed to her generally presentable state.

Gaara understood scars that no one else saw, which was probably why he relented to her request without much protest. Propriety demanded he offer her the bed, but a lifetime of class privilege warred against the impulse. If she wanted to play the dutiful servant then who was he to stop her? Then again, had they not spoken of his inability to sleep normally?

In the end he had offered her the bed and she had quickly accepted. She hadn't even acted surprised when he offered, as if it were perfectly normal for him to give up his creature comforts now that he knew she was a woman. Sakura didn't know him well enough yet to understand how rare a thing it was for Gaara to worry about the emotional state of another human being let alone give up something he felt was rightfully his.

Once settled down into the blankets and curled into a tight ball, Gaara watched impassively until her breathing evened out and then proceeded to take a quick trip downstairs to fetch handfuls of dirt. Spreading it evenly as possible around the room, he found himself turning back to Sakura more often than not and examining her face in the half moon light from the window. Once she had cleaned herself she had seemed much younger than he had first assumed her to be, possibly no older than he was in fact. She didn't have the elfin features that his peers exalted in women, but there was a handsomeness to her even with cheeks hollowed from hunger and eyes ringed with dark tired circles. He had seen a similar face in the mirror enough times to barely see such trivial details as unnatural.

In the makeshift pile of blankets in the corner he sat and stared at the occupied bed and wondered where she had been intending to go when Orochimaru caught her and locked her in that cell. Surely if she had been headed to employment that opportunity would have passed. A healer might be a fine addition to his staff given the number of accidents that took place in the mine. He had never expected to be able to command the exclusive attention of one at a reasonable price, but perhaps she was vulnerable enough to be amenable to an economically disadvantageous situation.

Unusually exhausted, Gaara found himself falling asleep with thoughts of Sakura circling around his mind only to awaken what felt like moments later when he was alerted to a presence. The unsettled dirt by the windowsill told him easily the method of entry even without opening his eyes. The movements from the person were soundless, but the dirt told Gaara that the figure was heading towards the bed. At that, a spike of alarm jetted through him and his eyes shot open to see pale hair and dark clothes gliding towards the sleeping form of his female companion.

Shouting would startle the man into drastic action so instead Gaara silently called the scattered sand to himself, imagining that if he could gather enough of that and perhaps the ashes from the small fireplace which had decomposed enough to respond to his affinity that perhaps he could fashion a slim blade. The stolen wrench was near the bed but he couldn't alert Sakura to its presence.

At first the man stood over Sakura, but then before Gaara could finish compacting the dirt so that it would hold offensively, the man's hands reached out to choke her. As soon as the hands were around her neck her body came alive, the sounds coming from her unnatural and purely born of panic.

Gaara stood at once, ready to rush over and bowl the man over so that he couldn't finish his murderous task when he heard a sickening crunch and the man let out a short scream, rocking back and stumbling into the moonlight. His hand was at a strange angle and Gaara watched with more than a little fascination and the man set it right with another grinding pop.

"I didn't expect to find you _here_," the man said, his voice mild for all there was no humanly possible way he wasn't in immense pain.

"Kimimaro…" Sakura's voice was a hiss and a cough as she rose from the bed clad only in the shirt and pants she had slept in. "I won't go back!"

Throwing wild punches, she lunged at the man who easily dodged her amateur boxing efforts. He cradled his injured wrist, but seemingly was unphased by it. Sakura was clearly not the better fighter, even if her boxing form was not entirely without practice. Perhaps that brother of hers had showed her a trick or two as they grew up but she wasn't calm enough to read Kimimaro's movements and anticipate his location.

Rising up from his dark corner, Gaara revealed himself as he darted over to the bed to grab the abandoned wrench. It was enough of a surprise to distract the pale man Sakura was fighting, and in that split second she was able to land a punch with her right hand that resulted in a much more sickening wet crunch than when she had snapped his wrist backwards. For a moment, everyone was frozen in tableau as Sakura realized the damage she had wrought with her punch.

Gaara, hand wound round the handle of the wrench, noted with something akin to glee that she had practically caved in the other man's face on the left side. The gurgling sound was followed by a soft clatter as a couple teeth fell out of the man's pulverized jaw. Gaara watched as the man didn't hesitate as Sakura did, and threw himself out of the window he had entered from. The thump of the man hitting the ground from the second story didn't move Gaara much, as he could tell from the movement on the earth outside that their would-be assassin picked himself up and ran off after a few minutes.

More concerned about the Sakura, he saw her trembling and flexing her metallic hand as if caught in a loop. She was muttering something to herself and Gaara wondered if she was going into shock because of the gruesome sight of the man's face after her punch, or because her punch had caused the grisly sight to begin with. Cautiously, still holding his wrench but now knowing it probably wouldn't provide much protection should Sakura lash out with her arm, Gaara approached the woman.

What would a normal person do? Offer condolences? He was out of his emotional depth. It wasn't the first time he had seen a caved in face nor would it probably be the last. In his early teens he had been in the mines with his father feeling out deposits when a machine had slipped a belt and a metallic cord had whipped an unlucky man. Unlike their assassin, this man never got up again, and as his father had quickly ordered the foreman to have men remove the corpse in another breath he instructed Gaara on the accidental death statistics and told him he would need to compare them with the birth metrics and inform him in the morning if there was enough labor in the pool. Acceptable death rates, he had mentioned. Meanwhile, a human being was hauled away like so much waste.

"I'm a monster," Sakura said mostly to herself, which echoed the natural conclusion to Gaara's reminiscent thought pattern.

He had gotten so close, hand outstretched as if to pat her on the shoulder, but he never connected. Instead, Sakura turned with eyes full of unshed tears and walked forward to lean her head against his shoulder. She didn't raise her arms for an embrace, and maybe she was afraid to do so, but their pose was awkward and Gaara was paralyzed with indecision. His shirt started to feel wet and he suspected she was silently leaking tears, so at last his formerly outstretched arm curved around to touch the back of her neck. It felt hot.

In his other hand Gaara wasn't about to let go of the wrench.

"I suspect neither of us will be sleeping." Gaara said, "An explanation is in order." No human being could so easily destroy another and it was time for Sakura to provide insight into her unusual power.

***

Sakura wished she could curl into herself and disappear. Gaara sat on a chair, legs spread and arms crossed, waiting for her to explain. At once she didn't want to say a word and to also tell him more than everything. He seemed casually intimidating, even knowing as he did that that she could kill him with a couple well targeted punches. His shirt was only half tucked into his pants and his bare foot tapped impatiently against the floor. If he feared her at all he gave no indication. She feared herself enough for both of them.

Kimimaro had given up his humanity, as had Orochimaru, in pursuit of occult connections and she wasn't worried about having killed him. She had seen him break and set his own bones before. As Orochimaru's second most loyal follower behind Kabuto, she should have expected him to come for them quickly. Destroying his face was no great setback, but the eye she had nearly popped out of his head would not be so easily fixed. Kabuto's healing abilities were much more rudimentary than his dissection techniques.

Memories of the damage she had accomplished with one punch still made her feel nauseated. She had certainly seen and treated worse before, but none of those injuries had been caused by her. Pulling blankets that Gaara and piled on top of her closer to her core, she burrowed into the bed and wished it was all a dream. Perhaps she would wake up at her teacher Tsunade's and begin her normal chores of the day to prepare the examination rooms with clean materials and check the levels and quantity of their available medications.

"They took my arm forcibly. I didn't lose it in the accident they caused. When the carriage rolled down into the ravine the driver and the other two passengers died in the fall. I was gravely injured but working on the process of healing myself when they came for me. Once they knew I could heal, Orochimaru tried to recruit me into his… cult." Her voice was foreign to her ears. "Obviously I refused. Not just because he was a madman but because his experiments are against nature and decency."

Her shaking amplified. She wasn't ready to talk about this. Gaara's green eyes in the lamplight became her anchor to reality. He was here, he was listening, he wasn't judging.

"I started to seemingly hallucinate. Sometimes it was because of the drugs they tried out on me. I saw things that didn't make sense." Orochimaru with a snake's head. Kabuto trying to splice together animals to make hybrid beings. Kimimaro inside of glowing occult circles and speaking in a language that sounded like a cross between drowning and choking. "Whatever your belief, Orochimaru is an abomination and his followers willing disciples."

"I don't disagree," Gaara said, eyeing the window as if it would suddenly contain the evil men themselves. "You're circling the present issue."

Damn him, but this was hard to talk about! Didn't he have any empathy for her position at all?

"There came a day when they grew tired of merely poisoning me. No one had survived the procedure before, or so I gleaned from their chatter. I only remember the first half of it well, when Kabuto dislocated and sawed off my arm. Orochimaru and Kimimaro moved me before I bled out onto the floor and then…." Her words choked off as her throat swelled shut from the emotion of it all. "I—" Sakura tried to continue but her body wouldn't let her, her tongue thick in her mouth. Without knowing it she had grabbed the edge of the bed and she could hear the wood splintering in her metallic grip.

"Enough." Gaara broke the intensity of the moment by capturing her attention with a sharp word. Uncrossing his arms, he leaned forward and examined Sakura closely. "Finish some other night."

He didn't know fear, she thought with wonder. Sakura thought her fear had been burned and starved out of her, but then had come freedom and the possibility of a slim slice of normalcy. She could still be a physician, she could live the dream she had believed in for over two decades, and she hadn't realized how powerful that lack of hope had been in her cell. When she had had nothing they could take nothing from her. Escape was proving more complex than getting out of a dark basement.

A cold cup of tea, dregs from the second pot, was thrust in her face and Sakura accepted it with a flush of gratefulness. "Aren't you afraid they'll come for us again? Had you been sleeping in that bed instead of me…" She looked up at Gaara, this frigid man who somehow was becoming her rock.

"This isn't the first time someone's tried to kill me." Slowly, in the dimming light of the oil lamp, Gaara formed thin spikes of hardened earth on his hand and tested their points with a fingertip before they melted away as dust through his fingertips. Anywhere sufficient earth existed Gaara had a weapon at hand. "But I'll admit my tools are getting more refined now. It's the only thing I would thank the mad doctor for in this situation."

If understanding the currents and chemicals of the body was rare in those that held water affinity Sakura wondered how much rarer it would be for someone with earth affinity to call the very ground to them. She knew so little about other practitioners of the elements. Gaara himself seemed solid, thin as he was, his personality seemingly closed and intractable. He filled the room with his presence and perhaps in time Sakura would be able to meet that energy with strength, but tonight she felt tired and content to let him play guard dog as he stalked the floorboards and contemplated his thoughts.

Bending down with a half-smile playing across his face, Gaara picked up a tooth and flicked it out the still partially open window. Sakura suppressed a shudder.


	4. Chapter 4

Gaara watched Sakura twine a finger in her hair and sigh, this time more loudly than the times before. The rocking of the carriage continued to make him ill but he was beginning to also feel a burrowing annoyance more pervasive than the ongoing nausea. Obviously, the woman wanted to talk. Equally obviously, Gaara had no interest in much more than keeping down the meager breakfast he had eaten prior to getting back on the road. Sakura had also eaten lightly, but Gaara assumed it was because of the disturbance of the night before and not because she actually wished to skip any meals. She still looked distinctly _hungry_. They weren’t stopping for conveniences like a midday meal, but he knew she had a cloth napkin with bread and cheese in it. She clutched it like a lifeline, seemingly unwilling to consume it.

Her metal hand rested demurely on her lap, inert, obscured by his too-long sleeves and recently purchased grey gloves. Now that he knew her capabilities he also noticed how she was careful to do very little with her unusual arm. When she did use it, there was a deliberate concentration to her countenance as she performed menial tasks such as lifting a cup to her lips or fastening a button. It seemed once he started watching her more closely there were all sorts of other things that came into sharp focus, from the way she was unable to stay still for long while seated to the way she would flick her left wrist back and forth when she was agitated.

“It’s a long trip back to my property. It would behoove you to sleep.” Sakura stopped popping her wrist and turned bloodshot eyes in his direction. It was the first time he had spoken in hours and she clearly didn’t think much of his directive.

Even though she probably wasn’t feeling very friendly, her answering tone was light. “Why don’t you tell me a bit about this property?”

There was the occasional tree, a large house with more rooms than people, a road that led to the first and smallest of the Sabaku family mines, and a lot of annoying family members. There was little to say about the property, so far as Gaara was concerned. It was the mundane of the familiar. He spent most of his time isolated in his study with his correspondence; occasionally he was speaking with foremen or inspectors. Now that he thought about it, he was hard pressed to tell her the color of the façade let alone how many rooms or what they contained. She’d see it soon enough and could form her own judgements. It was impossible to think that he wouldn’t bring her with him after the events of last night.

“It’s serviceable for what it needs to do,” was what he landed on, trying to focus his eyes in the distance the way the physician had told him when his motion sickness was particularly bad. Inevitably, it failed and his eyes darted over to Sakura with more than a little recrimination. Surely if she could cure him of poisoning a little nausea wasn’t so troublesome…

Sakura sighed. “I don’t know what I’ve done to offend, if this is about last night—” her metallic hand was clenching and unclenching and she glanced down at it while speaking with a certain hollowness to her tone. It seemed like she had to will herself to relax the rigid fingers, sliding her arm off her lap to obscure the offending limb.

“It’s not.” He was shorter with her than he meant to be, but somehow he didn’t want her thinking he disliked her in some fashion or thought less of her for her unusual appendage. He actually found her uncanny arm rather fascinating, but that would have been just as strange a sentiment to air. “Travel makes me, unwell. Boats are a lost cause. Carriages are nearly as foul.”

There was a flash of recognition on her face as if she had put together puzzle pieces that previous hadn’t fit. “Motion sickness? Sadly, that’s not a malady that any physician can cure for you. It’s a poor trick your mind plays upon your body.”

Sharing his burden with her seemed to have cheered her, and he watched as she bit gently at her lip before he was forced to look back at the distance to settle his stomach once more. It was while he was grimacing in the direction of some rather bored looking sheep in a field when he felt the shifting weight in the seat next to him. He whipped his head to face Sakura so quickly he wasn’t able to focus on her right away. The world was a blur of displeasure, then suddenly there was peace.

He wasn’t the kind of man who complained about his health. Rather, up until this moment in his life he assumed that he was in better health than most people who barely rose to meet the day without cracking backs or stiff limbs. Sakura had twined the fingers of her left hand with his right and somehow that connection was not only curing him of his illness but every bit of tension was gone from his body. A jaw he didn’t know he clenched relaxed, and the traces of a headache vanished with it. The generalized tiredness that gripped him was gone. Minor aches and bruises from the adventures of the past few days were no longer noticeable. He wouldn’t be surprised that upon inspection he would find them gone as well.

As if rushing in to fill a void, now that he was not possessing even one bodily distraction, his mind brimmed with grim thoughts. It was a cavernous maw in which his anxiety amplified like a sustained animalistic scream. Sakura was holding his hand. A glove was clutched in her lap by her metal hand and he could see now how their hands were matched in skin tone (which told Gaara more than he needed to know about how another human being could acquire his level of paleness). Her eyes were closed, as if concentrating on the continuous task of healing him, and he could feel panic rise as he knew it would be a moment or two before he said something horrific to her to force them to separate. Their closeness was more than he could handle, and his loss of composure was crumbling what little veneer of gentlemanly behavior he tried to put forth to the world. Whatever calming effect she was encouraging in his body was surely fought off by his own mind which demanded he go on the attack.

“It was mere centuries ago that those who could heal were considered witches.” Her words startled him. Sakura didn’t open her eyes, but Gaara could already feel his heartbeat slowing down again as he focused on her words and not the hand clutching his own sweaty palm. “Religious people of all sorts decided that the ability to heal was against God’s will—pick a God, they all seemed to agree on this—and that anyone using their affinity to reverse the course of diseases was performing blasphemy.”

Gaara thought of religious fanatics coming for Sakura with pitchforks and torches, and smiled at the ridiculousness of it all. She would have been too canny to be caught up in that nonsense, surely.

“It was probably inevitable that there would be a fall, when before that those that could heal were hailed as messengers from the gods, or even gods themselves.” Sakura laughed. “Maybe some of them even believed it. This is more art than skill, even if you can train it. I trained with the best and even so there are things she can do that I can’t—that I may never do.”

Curiosity eclipsed his revulsion at being so casually touched in a prolonged manner, combined with something like gratefulness that he didn’t feel dizzy. “Like what?”

“My teacher can reverse the signs of aging. Outwardly anyway. It’s something about training the skin over time to retain certain qualities. I don’t know if I’ll ever possess such a knack. My strengths tended to lie with internal changes: muscles and balance of the chemicals of the body.” She smiled warmly at first but it quickly became brittle. “That’s how I survived so many poisoning attempts from Dr. Orochimaru…”

He could feel her hand start to slide from his as her spirit withdrew to unhappier times. Gaara wasn’t about to let it happen, clutching her hand suddenly with a strength that surprised them both and still slippery with cold sweat. “Just a while longer, before I must return to the wretched state of illness you’ve stayed.”

That seemed to be enough for Sakura. Her eyes slid past him and she appeared to turn her attention to the other carriage window and what lay beyond. After a moment, her head fell to rest on his shoulder.

The beast that resided in Gaara’s mind howled for him to create distance, but his body didn’t move an inch.

*  
*  
*

The ability to cure most ailments. A swifter than average mind. Unnatural strength. 

And here she was clutching a blanket and pillow in front of his door and praying silently that Gaara wouldn’t turn her out the moment she entered. Last night hadn’t gone well for either of them, being the first night Sakura thought she would be able to sleep without the terror of another eternal twilight in Dr. Orochimaru’s occult basement hellscape. By rights they should be far enough away, and Kimimaro hurt enough, that it was unlikely another attack was imminent. Sakura should sleep in her own well-appointed chamber, next to Gaara’s own, where a moment ago she had bathed again and carefully washed her borrowed clothing.

Being able to control water meant drying things was inconsequential, even if the task itself felt menial. It was more complicated than people suspected to not remove too much water from materials. Humidity on some level was important to keep clothing from becoming too brittle and truly removing all moisture from something could result in damage. Laundry done naturally was always the best course of action, but she only had one set of clothing on this peculiar trip and she wasn’t about to do anything so offensive as smell on the long carriage rides.

A gloved hand gently rapped against the door, a timid thing, but at the second knock the door jerked open. There stood Gaara, expression unamused and waistcoat shockingly unbuttoned, gesturing for her to enter.  
“I wondered how long you would stand there. Be indecisive in your own room first next time.”

Sakura’s cheeks reddened as she stomped into the room in her overly large borrowed shoes, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Gaara’s lips twitch into something like a smile. By the time he faced her properly again he was all impassive composure.

“I’m sure you know, or suspect, what I came to inquire.” She squeezed the pillow and blanket to her chest, unwilling to drop them just in case she needed to return back to her own dark room in this inn. The window was firmly shut and the curtains drawn here, but she could hear the indistinct sound of people talking and the clatter of horse hooves a floor below. No sparsely populated village tonight, they had reached a moderately populated hub between cities. Gaara had been easily able to credit this room and their food to his business account, having stayed previously.

Oddly, more people around only served to heighten Sakura’s anxiety. It had felt like an eternity away from civilization while she had been in captivity and she had wished for nothing more than to rejoin it, but now that she had she wanted to hide. It was illogical.

Gaara gestured to the bed. “I’ll endeavor to do a better job as your protector.” It could have been said sarcastically, but Sakura had the feeling that while the tone was bland it was also mostly sincere. Her defenses dropped the same moment her borrowed pillow hit his bedding. Tension she didn’t realize she had been holding in her frame caused a muscle in her back to cramp, and with a grimace she forced it to stop in the space of a few measured breaths.

“If you have no particular objection, I would be happy to wash your clothing for you before you rest this evening. I can’t offer you much else in way of gratitude unless there is some bodily ill that afflicts—”

“I’m fine.” Gaara bit out too quickly. There was a touch of alarm to that response she didn’t entirely understand. After a pause he hazarded a question that seemed more confused than anything. “Am I… malodorous?”

Sakura smiled softly. “Not in comparison to some, but after a couple days of travel the natural oils and sundry produced by a body tend to linger on anything we touch for prolonged periods. Maybe I could simply clean your shirt?” Compared to Naruto, Gaara hardly sweat let alone smell, but every time she even thought of her sibling at sea her heart ached so she put the memories aside.

He turned away from her, facing the small fire that had been prepared in the room’s hearth and then with a jerking motion he was pulling off his waistcoat. There was a pang of loss than ran through Sakura as she realized all at once that the only reason a “gentleman” like Gaara would be undressing in front of her like this would be because he either considered her of loose morals or he didn’t consider her to be a woman at all at this point in their association.

Self-image in tatters, Sakura accepted the shirt with dead eyes as Gaara handed it to her. The planes of his face were stark as lamplight warred with firelight in the room. It was impossible not to see the unblemished musculature of his chest and stomach as he stood before her. He wasn’t built athletically, but neither was he soft. Sakura thought of the line along her right shoulder where metal and flesh met and melded, or of the various childhood scars that stood out in summer when she took on the faint hint of tan no matter what protective creams the women in her life had passed to her to prevent it. Gaara looked untouched by time or happenstance. 

“Could you repeat that please? I was woolgathering.” Sakura pinked again. Gaara spoke rarely enough, and he seemed like the kind of person who didn’t like to repeat himself.

“You look displeased. Was your actual intention to wash it in the morning?”

Taking the opportunity to retreat and get her own emotions in order, Sakura stood up from the bed suddenly with his shirt in hand. At once she realized they were nearly nose to nose, which was far too close for her liking in his current state of undress. He might have given up on her femininity, but Sakura would grasp at those loose strands of propriety. She wouldn’t always be dressed in men’s clothing, or thin as a rail, and perhaps he would realize then she wasn’t to be taken so lightly.

“It will be the work of less than half an hour. I’ll return with it when I intend to sleep.”

Gaara watched her sidestep with something like satisfaction before she turned away and let herself out.


	5. Chapter 5

"It would be easier to provide for your safety if you continued to present as a man." Gaara watched as Sakura, formerly sipping tea to wash down their hastily assembled late lunch of cold meats and cheeses at the small stop mere miles from his family's main property, sprayed both himself and herself with a fine mist in shock. The coachman, after days of pushing too hard, couldn't do much about a horse so tired it was stumbling, and the rest was forced to keep the animal from going lame. Secretly, Gaara had been glad for an extra moment away from the crush of his waiting responsibilities. Even if his companion's need for conversation burdened him, her presence largely relaxed him. Perhaps he was misrepresenting the situation, however, as much of his anxiety outside of her presence was the growing certainty that Orochimaru was plotting a way to revenge himself on them both.

He cracked an eye as a blushing Dr. Haruno dabbed his face judiciously with a napkin before suddenly pulling away. "I would say that you had sustained some sort of head injury recently, but…"

He wiped a hand down his face, looking down with mild disdain as it came away damp. "As a woman, even a physician, you won't be able to exist freely in my home. You'll need a companion—my sister is not suitable—and I don't easily welcome outsiders."

Sakura started, eyeing him with something that hinted at a smile, but then her skeptical frown was back.

"There will be expectations if you arrive as Miss Haruno. Social. Interpersonal. Men are not subject to the same rules. Particularly professional men."

"No, they aren't." Her simmering irritation was back, and Gaara was glad. He liked it when she had some fire in her, and she had gotten more withdrawn the closer they came to their destination. There was a sense of worry that hung about her like a shroud, and while she may not know her own next steps Gaara was good at providing direction to others. His whole life was structured around finding and enacting decisive solutions. "Are you sure you're just not trying to avoid compromising my virtue or some other ridiculous notion? I assure you I will not bow to social pressure to insist on a betrothal over something as inconsequential as travelling together unchaperoned."

Gaara thought back to the, admittedly few, women who had tried to lure him with their charms and of the absolute disgust he had felt at someone trying to encroach on his way of life. How strange that he was inviting similar inconvenience under a different guise with Sakura. But he felt responsible for her in a way he couldn't identify as it was different from his inherited duties. He had saved her life, she was his in a way that transcended articles of ownership. Whether she felt the same remained to be seen, but she seemed in no hurry to remove herself from his presence no matter her occasional weak protest that there were matters waiting for her outside of his sphere of influence.

"I have no interest in the state of your virtue. Miss Haruno would have to keep her distance, but Dr. Haruno could easily move as he wished in my presence."

It seemed like Sakura was muttering something uncomplimentary under her breath, but with a sigh she picked up her tea and drank the rest of it down before meeting his eyes with that unwavering stare that made him feel uncomfortably seen. "So I'm to be your personal physician? And how long before someone suspects something? Before my secret is blown open and I'm social cannon fodder?"

"My life isn't of interest to fashionable people. You're imagining scandal but there's minimal chance when I don't frequent clubs or ballrooms. I don't throw parties. My life is the mines."

There was pity in her eyes, and Gaara didn't like it, but she seemed to sense that as she busied herself with slicing off a piece of salami. Her gloved hand moved too quickly and the plate cracked under the downward pressure of the knife. Sakura winced, while Gaara smirked. At least she didn't stutter out an apology this time, she merely picked up the slice of salami and calmly ate it.

"If you think I'm still needed, then I'll embrace whatever plan you think serves your interests best." The words were strange, almost hollow. There was an obviously unwilling edge to her agreement, but Gaara knew she would come to see this was the best course of action and it would give her time to adjust to her arm and maintain the sort of invisibility she seemed to desire as she reentered society after her ordeal. This was for her protection—to keep her safe.

A whisper in the back of his mind suggested it was for his sake as well—to keep her close, hidden.

It was easy to drown those thoughts with logistics. She fit his clothing for now, but that wouldn't be the case as she regained her health and taking her to a tailor wouldn't do at this rate. Perhaps he could obtain her measurements and have his own tailor…

"My brother used to say that it would have been better for me if I had born a man. Naturally, this led me to hit him even harder in response. He was resentful that he got in trouble for hitting me back, you see." Sakura nibbled some cheese, her eyes skirting around the small room they sat in. It was rustic, a plain parlor which was only notable for its cleanliness and sturdy furniture. Not much was here to distract the senses beyond a simple pastoral painting and eventually she spoke again. "During my apprenticeship, my teacher wore trousers. She encouraged me to as well, but I told her there were pieces of my life I wasn't ready to fully give up on. Trousers may be practical for my profession, but she is an eccentric member of the aristocracy and of a certain age besides—beyond the judgement of most of her peers. I don't think anyone would take me seriously or hire my services if I stray too far from the norm."

Gaara was quick in his reply. "You don't need to care what they think now."

"How has my circumstance altered so much other than the long hair that I slaved over and tended for most of my life is a memory in a dustbin somewhere now?"

"I am retaining your services, and I don't care how you dress, regardless of the gender you introduce yourself as to my household." Gaara sipped his own tea.

Strangely mollified by his confidence, Sakura seemed reluctant to continue to protest, but then was unable to hold back at the same time. "I don't sound like a man. And while I have no aspirations or pretention over being a great beauty, I also know I don't look like a man. No one looks at servants closely and pretending to be your valet has been passably easy, but the same cannot be said of being a guest in your household. I don't think such a ruse will hold up under scrutiny."

The silence that lay between them was oddly heavy, as if her return to her female identity marked a distance in their strange association.

"Have you met a feminine looking man before?" Gaara's voice was low, more gravel than his usual emotionless drawl. Sakura nodded slowly, thinking of several such men she had treated. "A man with a high-pitched voice or eccentric demeanor?" Sakura nodded again, getting the drift of Gaara's thoughts.

"So you're saying perhaps I do look like a man after all?" It was said with an arch of her eyebrow, and in another time and place it could have been considered an attempt at teasing. "I used to slap my brother for implying the same, but I'll concede the point. There are many kinds of men in this world, who's to say I would be at all unusual..."

With the course of action seemingly decided in the direction Gaara desired, he merely nodded agreement to Sakura's capitulation. The tea had gone cold, but he continued to drink it anyway rather than make further comment on Dr. Haruno's appearance.

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The filthy carriage had trundled towards a hulking monster of an estate. This was the sort of manor that had whole wings in which people could live their lives without encountering one another. Despite that there were not many people out in front to meet them: a few footmen to presumably take their (now nonexistent) bags, a tall imposing man that most likely was a butler, and then two well dressed and stone faced people whose resemblance to Gaara was strong enough to tell her they were related. Distinctive facial structure aside, the scowl on the woman and the particular way in which the man crossed his arms in front of him was a dead giveaway. She'd know those defense mechanisms anywhere at this point.

"Welcome home, brother, I take it your business with the doctor concluded unsuccessfully?"

Gaara stepped out of the carriage without bothering to answer, and everyone in the small welcome party shifted from bland and vaguely unwelcoming to unsteady as they noticed Sakura stand up to follow.

"We have a guest?! Why didn't you send word?" the brother practically shed his skin and transformed his face from vague frown into a friendly smile. Now that Sakura was closer to him, she could see the ink stains on his cuffs and face as if he had only recently emerged from an office. "Perhaps an associate of the doctor? Kankuro Sabaku, welcome to our humble cottage."

It was a joke, Sakura knew, as her eyes flicked up at the imposing façade in front of them. Behind she could hear a footman murmur questions to the butler. No doubt they were confused by the total lack of luggage. Sakura tried to offer up a ghost of a smile to at least acknowledge the joke.

"Doctor S—"

"Haruno." Gaara interrupted. "I've retained their services until such time as I am satisfied with the health of our workforce and household. Baki, I trust you'll see to the clearing out of the parlor near to my offices for the doctor to set up their own examination room."

This was not something they had discussed, but Sakura supposed she shouldn't be surprised that Gaara was thinking up plans that he hadn't seen fit to consult with her on. Even if those plans apparently included installing her as the doctor in residence as it were, rather than his personal physician. It was one thing to serve a household and quite another to be a kept professional, but then she thought of her silent promise when he saved her from that cold basement room and protests died in her throat before they could find voice.

"Come now, brother, surely there's time for social niceties! Introductions, maybe a bit of food and some conversation… or an explanation of how you go to visit one doctor and come home with another?" The nervously milling footmen finally registered as well to the more affable Sabaku sibling. "And where is all your luggage?"

Gaara looked uncomfortable with the line of questions, but Sakura saw that instead of becoming rattled he took on an even more forbidding appearance. For being a relatively short man, he certainly knew how to loom. "Lost to circumstance. More luggage can be purchased."

The brother was aghast. "Lost?!"

"Baki, have a bath prepared. Then, I'll be spending the rest of the evening in my office so have my supper brought there as usual. Dr. Haruno's as well."

"Sir." The butler acknowledged and he gestured for the footmen to return to whatever they had been doing before coming to meet the carriage. If they thought the lack of luggage odd, they all seemed to know better than to comment out loud within the family's hearing.

Kankuro looked like his head was paining him as he pinched the bridge of his nose with ink stained fingers. "Surely we should all dine with our new household member at least once before you abscond with him to your dank prison of an office."

The description of Gaara's office gave Sakura a strangely vivid flashback and involuntarily her right hand flexed. This was already overwhelming from the palatial home to the overly casual welcome while she tried to imagine what being a doctor to an entire village worth of people would entail. Maybe letting Gaara lead the way for now was her only move while she got her bearings. Their eyes met and Sakura must have poorly hid her alarm because he immediately moved in front of her as if to clear a path through his people.

Only the silent sister whose arms were still crossed and her mouth drawn down into a scowl was the one blocking a hasty retreat. She was dressed in a modest but expensive looking gown in royal purple, her long blond hair coiled in two wrapped braids. Sakura, who hadn't been able to talk to another woman her own age practically since she had gone to apprentice with Lady Tsunade, tried not to look too wistful. Maybe under other circumstances they could have taken tea or had a chat, but the die had been cast and she would need to maintain proper social distance.

"Temari…" Gaara practically growled. His sister took a step back, almost involuntarily, but then steadied herself.

"That parlor was mother's." Was all she supplied, disapproval writ plainly all over from her body language to her tone.

Gaara paused only momentarily as he swept past her into the open doors of the manor. "I'm aware." He responded as he made a dismissive wave indicating Sakura was to follow him. Since she would never be able to find her way to wherever her destination was in this house, she wasn't likely to allow herself to lose track of him anyway.

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"Your siblings already despise me." Sakura commented, trying to keep her tone light.

Gaara confidently strode down long corridors where various stern family members' portraits broke up the crowded paintings of hunting scenes, flowers, and various eclectic tableau. It was clear this family had been here since the days of knights if not earlier than that. From the looks the various Sabaku ancestors had on their faces when they sat for portraits, smiling was not something that ran in the family while rust red hair that popped up every other generation was.

"They don't know you. They despise me." He didn't say it with an ounce of regret.

Pulling off her glove from the only hand that could sweat, Sakura took a deep breath and reminded herself that as soon as she was doing medical work again life would seem normal. If nothing else, this situation would put her back in the thick of practicing medicine and healing others. That was her gift and her calling, and no matter what ridiculous barriers were placed on her personal life there were still good deeds to be accomplished.

While she didn't know their family dynamic, she had grown up with a sibling. It was hard to imagine being estranged from him when he was the warmest, friendliest person she had ever met. Even if they had not been siblings they would have been great friends. Thinking about Naruto still pained her, but she would write him directly now that they had arrived at Gaara's home. "Surely that isn't entirely true."

"Their reasons are valid enough. I don't blame them for their resentment."

"While I find you occasionally infuriating, I haven't detected anything like real villainy in you. If you were truly rotten you would have abandoned me to my fate."

Gaara halted walking suddenly, and Sakura stopped herself just in time to prevent a collision. He turned around slowly and they were nearly nose to nose as Gaara spoke in low tones. "You don't have to be evil to be hated."


	6. Chapter 6

There were few people that Gaara wished would sink into the earth never to be heard from again, and his cousin Sasori was certainly one of them. With his father dead, he was the last living person Gaara held in such peculiar regard. As the fastidious older man installed himself in the leather seat that lay opposite Gaara's desk, he saw the smirk that widened on the man's face as he took in Sakura standing stiffly behind Gaara. It was so tedious to watch the gears grind in his malevolent mind. Predictable, even.

Why would a doctor need to be present for their meeting? Did Gaara have any undisclosed health concerns? No person had been kept so close before, was the relationship unseemly? If there was social room to insert a blade and twist, Sasori would find it. He was also not above creating said opportunities, which was the main reason Gaara held active hate for his cousin. There had been one too many incidents in drawing rooms where men and women had been thrust in front of him as bait to see if there was weakness that could be exploited.

"Cousin, I had heard you had employed a new doctor and I took it upon myself to assure the shareholders that there was no cause for concern." Sasori brushed a hand through slightly curling auburn hair and smiled sweetly in Gaara's direction.

Snake. "If you are inquiring as to the state of my health—again—I can assure you Dr. Haruno is more than capable of giving an honest assessment. However, the doctor was asked to stay to treat the workers, not me."

It was a bit risky. Sakura hadn't been coached in Sasori's particular brand of venom. He liked drawing people in close and then stabbing them in the back. Gaara trusted that Sakura wasn't easily dazzled by a pretty face, but Sasori had a way of getting under one's skin…

"Perhaps the doctor would agree to a cursory examination, then? I happen to be an amateur practitioner myself and it would be of interest to compare observations." Gaara amended Sasori's words in his own mind. The mortally wounded and dead from the mine disappeared occasionally into carts that somehow found their way to him. His explorations into the intricacies of anatomy were well known inside the family. "After all, while you may be both the head of this family, and the company as well, you aren't expected to shoulder the burden of all the decisions, dear cousin."

Sakura was a decorative statue behind him, and he could feel the tension pouring off of her. As both men drew silent and stared in her direction he felt her startle. She sought Gaara's green eyes with her own, confusion writ large.

"What, here? Now?" She cleared her throat when the words practically squeaked from her throat. "My examination room is only partially set up, but it lies a short walk away. Perhaps Mr. Akasuna would be more comfortable to adjourn there?" She smoothed gloved hands down pale pants that had only arrived a few days ago. Gaara wished she wouldn't fidget, as in the corner of his vision Sasori's smile deepened. Already he knew his cousin's mental gears were determining how to take Sakura's affability and turn it into a tool.

Sighing, Gaara folded his hands in front of him and waited. There would be no suggesting anything to Sasori. He would do whatever he thought caused Gaara the most consternation. But secretly he hoped that they would not leave his study as at least here he would know what was said. Now to see if making a show of his excellent health was more important to Sasori than creating discomfort in Gaara. Given his cousin's boundless ego, it really was a toss up.

"I'd take you up on your offer, but I have no secrets from my esteemed cousin. You may fetch your tools. I'm sure my cousin and I can catch up with one another. After all, I simply must know more about this harrowing carriage accident that caused him to lose all his luggage!" Sasori's focus was back on Gaara, in an attempt to circle around the subject of Orochimaru.

Sakura's burgundy cravat, tied high to obscure her lack of Adam's apple, was probably irritating her with all the gulping Gaara was hearing behind him. Maybe he shouldn't have mentioned any of his history of antipathy with Sasori to her, even if he had only done so in broad terms. Her nervousness was distracting. Clearly, she was trying to be useful, and in her eagerness he knew she would make a mistake.

"No tools needed for a simple examination, Mr. Akasuna. I merely need to hold your ungloved hand." She was already removing her left glove, and Sasori was eyeing her with dawning understanding. Suddenly Sakura had gone from amusing curiosity to a prize to be coveted.

"Gaara, you never said you had found a doctor with water affinity! What a coup! This could make all the difference as we argue with the legislative body that the current state of affairs with the workers is more than humane. No common wage worker would be able to afford such a physician… as you well know." As Sakura approached, he casually leaned to one side and offered his hand as if he were a grand lady expecting a suitor to express affection. The hooded glance Sasori gave Sakura was almost coquettish. Then something seemed to occur to him and he started to pull back, but it was too late as Sakura had grasped his pianist's hand with both of her own.

There was no pulling away from that grip, Gaara knew. A miniscule smile crept at the edges of his mouth.

For long minutes they sat silently and listened to the ticking of the clock on the corner of Gaara's desk. It was probably the third clock he had been forced to buy in the past year. Somehow or other the ticking would get to him and the clock would find itself somehow shattered on the floor. The clockmakers in the nearby village knew his staff well and kept identical stock on hand for when Gaara had finished with one of his moods.

Sasori's pale skin had gone ashen, and his eyes widened as Sakura finally looked up to give her assessment. "You have a heart murmur, but I suspect you knew that because you appear already to be taking medicine for that. However, I would lower the dosage of laudanum you're taking if you feel the need to ingest it before a meeting such as this. Whomever prescribed it to you isn't doing you any favors." He couldn't see the sunny smile, as Gaara could only see the slicked back pink hair and the tilt of her head but he could imagine it. "Would you like me to clean the laudanum from your system?"

"Ah, not as such at this time." Sasori was nonplussed, a rarity. Gaara felt like Sakura had just taken his arrogant cousin down a peg or five. Laudanum was it? Well, that took Sasori's increasing protestations of tiredness and boredom at family gatherings and cast it in a new and sinister light. Sasori had come to probe at Gaara's weaknesses, and instead had gifted one of his own. "Gaara, I certainly can't fault your physician with any lack of _thoroughness_."

Gaara knew he had to keep all amusement from his voice or suffer immediate revenge from his cousin. "Dr. Haruno is the consummate professional."

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"Did I… do something wrong?" Sakura looked at the door to Gaara's study as if they hadn't both just watched his cousin Mr. Akasuna storm out. He had entered all smiles and saccharine words, but after Sakura's quick examination he had seemed almost malevolent. The man had turned on a dime, and Sakura wondered if some sort of instability of the mind ran in the family along with an occasional tendency for red hair. Maybe those qualities came in tandem.

"I should congratulate you," Gaara said, picking up his pen and scanning through an inventory of mechanical repairs and their likely cost for various large pieces of mining equipment. Infrastructure was forever breaking, he had complained once when she had asked why something like this had to occupy his time. She thought mechanical concerns would be better suited to a specialist, but then Gaara had hidden depths. "I have never succeeded in prematurely shortening a visit with Sasori before you appeared."

Sakura threw her hands into the air before crashing down into the chair that Sasori had just been occupying. "That was not my intention, and you know it!"

Gaara seemed content to mark his papers and ignore her consternation.

Examining her bare fingers idly, Sakura wondered how abnormality faded into routine so quickly. From the corner of Gaara's desk she snatched up the book on gemstones and crystalline formations she had been reading last night in this very chair. Companionable silence punctuated by the ticking clock and the rustle of paper settled her nerves. She hadn't started reading this for any other reason than intellectual curiosity as a mind couldn't only remain stimulated by a single topic and her whole life wasn't defined by medicine alone.

Beryl formations and coloring were less interesting than wondering at Gaara's cousin's behaviors. The opium addiction was common enough, and she could probably coach him into reform as she could flush his body of the toxin without withdrawal but in her experience that didn't actually stop someone from the habits of the mind and she had no easy cure for that. The heart murmur was true enough and could be innocent, but again she couldn't do anything for him unless he was willing to have surgery and something like that was risky even with her abilities. She had no training in surgical procedures, as that usually took multiple healers working in concert and there was a part of her that seriously doubted she could take a scalpel to a living thing even with the intent of saving its life. Not now.

Animalistic screams invaded her nightmares at night as surely as a fear of the dark she was unwilling to admit to anyone. Sakura could conquer it on her own, over time. The bioluminescent rod they had pilfered from Orochimaru's lab sometimes comforted her with a faint glow from the corner of her well-appointed room. Men's rooms were very different from women's in some ways, but the bed was no different and Gaara's family owned the best of everything. Her inability to sleep was not a lack of hospitality or comfort.

"At this rate your whole family will hate me…"

"Self-pity and hyperbole." Gaara's words cut to the quick, but the tone was casual and lessened the sting. He hadn't looked up from his work but he was somehow always listening, always aware of her. Even at night when she couldn't sleep and wandered into this very study to read by lamplight as he did the work of several people for his family business. Light refreshment was always brought in for those midnight sessions, and after a few discreet inquiries that she couched as medical concern with the staff she found that Gaara never ate when he was alone.

He _anticipated_ her in ways that still startled her. Maybe it had something to do with his earth affinity. Could he feel the iron in her the way she could touch him and sense the water in him?

"You were the one that said, and I quote 'be careful of my cousin, he has influence in strange quarters'. And now he clearly holds more than a little disdain for me."

The silence that followed meant one of two things to Sakura: either she was right, or Gaara didn't think her concerns worth responding to no matter how piteous her complaints. What Gaara consider small interpersonal matters would have caused gossip and scandal in her old social circles. Weeks of speculation about turns of phrase or a glance over a fan at a party. Meanwhile, Mr. Sabaku could set someone down bluntly and think nothing of it.

That line of thought was interesting enough, maybe he just didn't know. How could someone learn social niceties when all they did was learn business? "When was the last time you went to a party?"

Gaara actually looked up from his work, rubbing at eyes that needed to suddenly focus at a different range than before. It was endearing, lighting up a smile on Sakura's face that hadn't been there before. "Pardon?"

"I said, when was the last time you went to a party?"

Gaara set down his pen and folded his hands together. A small terrarium capped with glass behind him that contained various soil samples began to swirl as if in a mini sandstorm. She wondered if he was even aware of it. His abilities in past weeks had grown by uncanny leaps and sometimes almost frightened her. Excess of power wasn't known to bring out the best in people.

"My sister threw some sort of garden party when the weather was warm. Kankuro told me my presence was obligatory, not in the least because our lead mechanic was threatening to leave for more pay with the railroad. He said my presence always helped his negotiations proceed so long as I said nothing." It seemed to Sakura that letting Kankuro guide the interpersonal items that required tact was a fairly self-aware approach to their family business. She wouldn't be surprised if the garden party itself had been a setup to give Kankuro a chance to talk to that mechanic.

The dirt settled behind him as if nothing had unsettled it in the first place. He picked up his pen again as if the subject were now closed.

"So you went to a party and spoke to no one." Sakura wasn't done even if Gaara was.

"My behavior was consistent comparative to other social situations."

Sakura felt humor spark, and a laugh bubbled out. "I knew it! You don't know how to have fun."

The pen came down with moderate force and the dirt was swirling again. "Gatherings are never for fun, they are done always to serve a purpose such as marry off burdensome young adults or to secure obligations to further social capital."

"That is far and away the worst description of flirting and making plans with friends that I have ever heard! I stand by my previous statement. You don't know how to have fun." She stood up and pretended to examine another book on the shelves lining the walls, partially to keep from staring at the churning dirt in the terrarium. "Surely you played a game or two that would entice you to come out of this room. The day is rather fine if a little cool, not that you'd know with the curtains drawn as they are."

"Are you suggesting we take a walk together?"

Sakura blanched. Somehow when he put it like that it sounded a bit sordid. While the time they spent in his study was intimate to the point of inviting speculation, somehow taking a turn around the property was more evocative of the very things she knew the staff whispered about them.

"I was thinking more like cards in my office. It gets a lot of light, as you did have it converted from a drawing room."

He looked like he was going to say no. She had needled him with the implication he was bad at something, even if it was true. Gaara prided himself on being hyper competent at anything he set his mind to, but obviously he was not a genius at people and most everyone else knew better than to bring up his weakness to his face.

But Sakura knew how to corner a competitive person after years of living with her brother and then Tsunade. "If you don't know how to play whist, I understand if you'd rather defer to—"

"I know how to play." The response was whip fast and Sakura smiled at the books, schooling her expression before she turned back to Gaara.

"Excellent, I'll have tea brought in to my office and we can play a few hands" Sakura knew that even high handedly deciding things was no guarantee that Gaara would participate, but she had lit the fire of competition in him and he actually looked a little bit excited to beat her at cards. "I warn you, though, I had a lot of practice at whist when I lived with Lady Tsunade. She had quite the fanaticism for cards." And dice. And backgammon. And anything involving chance that could possibly be wagered on.

Gaara had neatly set aside his work in piles that no doubt signified to him where he needed to pick up where he left off. Formidable as he was, the tendency to organize was rather endearing. That twinge in her heart acted up again and she pounded on her chest lightly with her left fist as if it were heartburn from too much tomato with her eggs at breakfast.

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"I would swear you were cheating but I'll be damned if I can figure out how…" Sakura shot a cold cup of tea down her throat and Gaara knew his smile was triumphant. She had been ahead that game but at the last minute Gaara was winning trick after trick. Perhaps she was right and this would be more fun with more players. It wasn't nearly as tiresome as when he had been asked to participate in card games at dinner parties in the past. He had always declined, as usually one needed to play with a partner and that was even less appealing than sitting down with three relative strangers to make small talk and wager money. The idea of being Sakura's partner didn't fill him with ennui.

She had loosened her cravat as some of their matches became heated, throwing down cards with increasing vigor. While she had won a few hands at the beginning, the majority later had gone to Gaara and it had been satisfying to show her that he knew how to have 'fun'. His partner's reactions were delightfully varied, and the color that rose to her face when she was protesting his inevitable wins made him want to antagonize her further. Could he raise her temper enough to make her careless with that metallic fist of hers? Replacing a small table was well worth the amusing chaos of her lost temper.

"Good thing we aren't playing for real money or I would be even more deeply in debt to you," As soon as she said it, her good mood shifted suddenly. They didn't often speak of their introduction, or the cloud of dread that stemmed from Gaara's inability to track down where Orochimaru had moved his base of operations. There had to be another property, now that the mad doctor had abandoned the first one. Even with Gaara's connections the doctor was proving elusive.

"Call it payment rendered for chasing Sasori out today." He wanted her to smile again, he realized with something like wonder at himself. Seeing Sakura deflated put his good mood off, and he knew such empathy was a weakness his father had coached him out of feeling. At the time he had agreed with his father's assessment, but surely an exception could be made for his fair doctor.

Sakura merely snorted an acknowledgement, and stood with several pops of her spine as she arched back and sideways. Gaara admired the clothes that had been delivered for her and how well they fit her form. The tailor had done good work given that the measurements were taken remotely and sent as a rush order. A few weeks of eating better and regular walks and she'd never be able to fit into his pants again. Strange, he noted, at the twinge of disappointment that thought had engendered.

"It's about time I saw to my own work a bit. We've been at this for hours, if you hadn't noticed. Before you know it, supper will be upon us."

Gaara stared at her, uncomprehending why that should matter.

Sakura gave a light laugh, striding over to her desk and leaning back against it as she explained. "You may not take meals with your family, but I do. They might think something is wrong if I don't keep to my routine."

Regret, an unfamiliar emotion, sparked in him as he wondered now how life might have been if he had introduced her as Sakura to his family and not Dr. Haruno. Did Sakura find meals tiresome as she hid away part of herself from his family? There were complex feelings tied in with that regret, as at the same time he was happy to have the intimate secret that shackled her to him more tightly than Orochimaru ever managed.

She might despise him should she ever guess at his satisfaction. He was coming to despise himself for it; another new emotion the doctor had wrought in him.

"Then don't let me keep you." He was remote once more, overwhelmed by more introspection than he usually allowed. It was time to go back to schematics and core samples. Vendor estimates and demands. Gaara understood that world and how it ebbed and flowed.

"You might consider joining us sometime. Kankuro actually tells a mean joke, even if they are corny. Who would have thought an accountant to be so friendly? And Temari seems to know every bit of neighborhood gossip and while she seems like she would never loosen her lips, it really only takes a few well-placed questions to get her to divulge a juicy anecdote or two."

Mere weeks and Sakura had convinced siblings that had hated him his whole life to trust her. It was an enviable skill. A stomach that rarely accepted food readily soured further and he made a note to have the cook feed his portion to some other part of the household.

"Unlikely," He rose with stiff formality and straightened out his waistcoat. Before he had made it to the door he felt Sakura's hand on his shoulder. It was the one of flesh, not metal, and the heat of her palm seemed to sear him through his layers. He forced himself not to shrug her off.

"Hey, we were having a good time today. You don't have to come to dinner if you don't want to. I'm not trying to change anything. I just like your company."

She didn't need to try. She was changing him all the same.

"Enjoy dinner. I'll be in my study." He turned enough so that the hand fell off his shoulder on its own, and Sakura's concerned expression softened even as his glare faded to mirror her relaxation.

It took a moment to realize he was staring.

"If you're coming to read again tonight you should pick something else to read. That book on crystals tends towards breathless account of jewelry and is less informative than many other similar works."

Sakura laughed, and Gaara wondered if perhaps the less dry nature of the work was why she had stuck with it. He wondered why someone who clearly loved life would spend so much time with someone like him who was about as interesting as the core samples in his study. Her midnight visits had become the highlight of his long working days.

The darkness in him encouraged plotting ways to tie her to him more securely, but then he thought to Sasori's visit and how such sentiments created a kinship with the cousin he despised for similar qualities of character. Covetousness would only lead to disappointment. The safest route would be to allow himself the comfort of her presence without expectation.

For however long that lasted.


	7. Chapter 7

Sakura's nerves couldn't take _sudden_ these days, so when the door to her drawing room office was flung open with a crack that shook the nearby bookcase she was just happy that it obscured the way her teacup absolutely shattered in her metallic grip while she winced in mortification. Brushing a wet gloved hand against her pants to dust off any incriminating shards of ceramic, she cleared her throat and made eye contact with the pale faced and dirty child who had apparently been trying to find her. He coughed and spat to the side as his narrow chest took in all the air it could before he gasped out some words.

"Doctor! 'S a misfire that did in a pillar and we pulled out as many of the livin' as we can but—"

The kid had only got as far as 'misfire' when Sakura grabbed a bag and started stuffing it with whatever she could grab. Bandages, antiseptic misting bottles, cutting tools… in addition to her travel bag that she had taken on housecalls to the sturdy village that housed the mine's workforce. It had only been a few months but she had already had a chance to visit with people. Maybe even learn a name or two. Delivered a baby. Sakura tossed the bag at the kid who was still breathing hard, and he didn't catch it so much as nearly collapse under the sudden weight and momentum of it.

Thinking of the workers as slaves created a feeling of dissociation in her mind that made her sick to her stomach. Her oath sworn to Gaara, she was at his service and by extension she was at the service of his people. But there was a not inconsiderable side of her character that despised Gaara for keeping slaves at all. It was a relic of a time best forgotten—even if the legislation was hemming and hawing over its legality—and in their brave new world of scientific discovery and intellectual freedom the idea that a human being could be owned and used forced her gorge to rise a few times at polite dinners with Gaara's shareholders when they had come periodically to consult on various business matters this winter.

Their callous denial of other people's humanity sent her back to dark days despite her continued best efforts to stave off the onslaught. It made her want to crush the men and women who talked of profitability as if their wealth hadn't been founded on exploitation. Truly it was Gaara who grounded her more often than not, who quelled her emotions with a glance and a shake of his head as if he could sense her instability.

Inevitably she would find herself taking a ride to the mining village the next day to see what she could _do_. It had taken time, but now her visits had gone from guilty and sporadic to regular and anticipated. They were almost out the other side of a bitter winter and the periodic colds and flus that flourished in the tightly packed community. Lung disease was rampant even in the best of times and she couldn't fully fix what years of particulates had done to the delicate tissues of the older miners, but she did her damndest.

A mustachioed man with little piggy eyes had remarked on the low mortality rate to her only last week as if he were praising her for protecting his investment rather than doing her duty to protect life. Even Gaara knew better than to stop her when she had thrown down her napkin and provided a flimsy excuse through bared teeth. It was Kankuro, not Gaara, who had found her later in the library with a glass of port in one hand and the bottle in the other. His crooked smile and ready jokes tried to cajole her into better humor.

"The Sabaku family didn't start out in trade," Kankuro had said, his nose reddening on his fourth small glass. There had been wine at dinner as well in increasing volumes but his tolerance was that of a person who drinks to forget himself. "We were warriors once, if you can believe it. I could have battled with swords instead of with ledgers and all those blasted broken pen nibs."

"You never would have held a sword, but I could imagine your sister laying waste to armies with a long bow."

Laughing, Kankuro nodded. "You're probably right, my good doctor. Better to leave the fighting to my sister and brother as they have all the martial sense. So, if my sister is out shooting down armies and I'm apparently tending to the horses, what does my dear little brother do in this scenario?"

"A berserker clearly, frothing at the mouth with axes in hand." She downed the rest of her second glass. It was too sweet and on her half empty and roiling stomach also left a sick feeling down her throat. "Rivers of blood, that sort of thing."

Sagely, Kankuro tented his fingers and closed his eyes. "Perhaps we could convince my brother to sit for a portrait at last. We could commission the pose with the axes and furs and they could merely… add his face at the end."

Finally, Sakura had laughed and excused herself to her room in better humor than she had expected. Even yesterday Kankuro had made an oblique reference to Gaara considering a new winter coat, perhaps in fur, as he was handing off the monthly accounting summary and Sakura who had been reading in the corner snorted so hard she had to pretend it was the flowery text in the dry medical treatise that had amused her so. Gaara had seemed dubious but was uninclined to pursue the topic.

Perhaps that fur coat wasn't so farfetched, now that she was rushing out on the heels of the boy into a day windier than she would have hoped. Snow flurries picked up from the dry earth, reminding her that spring might be coming but the deepest cold was always at the latter half of winter. As she shivered and considered how much time she could possibly lose returning to her room, Gaara strode out with Baki in his wake. Gaara himself was pulling on leather gloves and casually waved away the hat Baki was trying to produce.

"The speed at which we'll be taking the horses won't allow for hats." Gaara met Sakura's wide worried gaze and she saw his mouth quirk up. "And have someone fetch Doctor Haruno's coat quickly."

Baki melted back into the doorway and Sakura looked over to where horses were being brought to them. She had ridden her older mare enough to know that she wouldn't make it to the mine before Gaara on that demon beast he insisted on keeping, particularly if she had to take the boy as well. For once Gaara's foul tempered horse made sense as he could stretch his legs better than most.

Glancing down at her shivering companion, she easily pulled the bag the boy clutched with two arms out of his grasp. He looked up at Sakura with questions in his expression. "Sir?"

"You stay here. I'll be faster on horseback without you. Find the kitchen and tell the cook to give you whatever dinner was prepared for me. You've done your part today." It was kindness but it was also practicality. Her mare was going to be pushed hard enough by this ride without the extra weight.

The boy looked like he didn't accept this development one bit. "With respect, sir, I've a brother—"

"What part of the Doctor's order sounded like a request to you." Gaara's voice was sharper and colder than any wind and the boy's spine stiffened before his face colored. He inclined his head respectfully to Sakura and took a step back away as the horses arrived. "I'm going ahead." Glancing down at Sakura's bags, Gaara snatched one up to take with him. No questions, and protests would have been useless. As always, Gaara was decisive and practical.

He didn't look back as his white and brown slice of hell took off at the slightest pressure, but Sakura knew his mind was a thousand miles away already. Or perhaps just five-ish miles. He wore responsibility like a shroud at the best of times, and she wondered what part of this tragedy would cause him turmoil—the human cost? The fiscal one?

"Sir," A footman got her attention, clutching her coat. Shaking off her reverie, she pulled on the proffered coat that smelled more of the laboratory where she stored it than anything else Sakura could name and climbed onto the horse while her remaining bag was secured behind her. The boy seemed determined to see her off, even as she saw his eyes burn in anger at being left behind. He'd recover from those resentments in time; he'd performed his job.

With a murmured thanks to the footmen she only glanced back once to make sure the bag was secure, and set off at as aggressive a pace as her grey mare allowed. If she concentrated a bit she could clear the acid that built up in the mare's muscles as she ran, but it wouldn't do to expend too much energy before they made it to the mine. Better to let the horse fulfill her part in this drama as well, and as she pushed the mare into greater speed she silently promised whatever apples and carrots could be sourced from the kitchen in the future.

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This was not the first accident Sakura had responded to, but this was the first mass casualty event that had happened since she had come to live with them and Gaara could see the way she paled as she took it in. Broken bones, people sighing and crying, the smell of blood and chemicals, men yelling at one another as they attempted to shore up pieces of the mine that looked unsteady or dig out the potentially living. Dust and panic were thick in the air and Gaara felt his psychic muscles flex to sweep away the granules causing him to squint into the distance even if the range he had cleared was short. If people noticed, which was unlikely, they'd be grateful for the increased visibility.

There was so much dust covering everything and for a moment he felt overwhelmed by the sheer mass of information his mind was trying to process. He could feel the outlines of people like never before, the tremor of footfall through his element, and the shifting pressures of the rocks themselves and it felt for a terrible moment like being deafened without sound ever getting involved. Gritting his teeth, Gaara closed his eyes and tuned out the staccato voice of the foreman that was attempting to catch him up on the situation. Numbers, names, estimates, and conjecture were all anyone could manage in the moment and he just needed the man to shut up so he could collect his own thoughts.

Eventually he realized that the foreman had stopped talking entirely, and it was a moment before Gaara saw that was because his desire to silence the man had somehow spawned a tightly packed mask made of dust to cover his mouth. It fell away as soon as Gaara noticed he had created it from coalescing the particles of dust in the air, but the foreman was a blubbering mess having not been able to remove the makeshift gag for some seconds.

Inconvenient, Gaara thought. His abilities had grown by leaps, but his control was still…

"I said a tourniquet! Press right here and don't stop until I tell you to, even if I am not here. You keep pressing like his life depends on it!" Sakura had clearly found the most critically wounded already and was doing as she had been trained to do at a volume a field marshal would envy. Assess, supply aide, and perhaps whatever other strange healing her water affinity would allow before she was drained was clearly her purpose. She had arrived minutes after him, much to Gaara's surprise. Sakura had a way of exceeding expectations like that as a matter of course.

Corralling anyone with even a spec of first aide experience, she was handing out supplies, treating the wounded, and unbelievably somehow also getting updates on the recovery efforts of more bodies while Gaara was watching his lead foreman have a nervous breakdown. His fists clenched tightly in his gloves Gaara willed himself to stop resenting Sakura's capacity to lead. These people trusted her in crisis.

"Pull yourself together," Gaara ground out to the man still running rough fingers over his lips like he wasn't sure they were still there. "Report now or the gag goes back on."

That seemed to set the man off again rendering him worse than useless. Gaara instead allowed his consciousness to disperse a bit more and took in the state of the damage. He could feel bodies in the rubble, mostly dead but a few still alive. The stone was indeed unstable after losing a pillar in this shaft. They never would have been blasting so close to a pillar, and they also never would have used so much at once in one spot so it must have gone off while they were all grouped together and being staged for movement elsewhere. Why anyone would have set many explosives near a pillar at all was a mystery, but Gaara had suspicions that this accident was less surprising to some.

Sabotage was such a mundane problem. He had preferred it when his enemies came for him in specific. Involving others seemed distasteful. Perhaps Orochimaru was finally making a move. Time to audit the roster of foremen as well as their accounts. Looking for bribes wouldn't be difficult for Kankuro. The man had a sense for numbers even if he was a fool in many other ways.

There was a shift in the feeling of the rocks around him, and Gaara sensed the way the cavern would partially collapse before the rumbling began, but would he had never counted on was the way Sakura ran towards the danger rather than away from it. It was a sense of mounting horror that froze Gaara where he stood as he saw Sakura sprint and slide in on her knees to brace what looked like an entire slab of rock from landing on two men digging out a third man.

Her face twisted in pain, Gaara knew that her right arm might be uncannily strong but everything past that was mere muscle and sinew and she wouldn't be able to support the weight long. Sakura's eyes were shut as she strained, and Gaara could clearly see her body give inch by inch as she probably realized she had no good exit strategy for this situation. Every part of him breathed out, like a vacuum tube had been affixed to his soul and he pushed against that feeling with a will to survive he hadn't suspected he felt to that extent. Perhaps it was because his will was extraneous to his body now, but as he came out of his trance he saw Sakura roll out from under the stone slab before what he could only describe as a claw made of dust disintegrated under the weight of it. At least that's what he thought he saw beyond the spots swimming in front of his vision.

For those that had witnessed the tableau no one was sure if the doctor or the master was the more terrifying one, but consensus seemed to land on Gaara quickly enough as Sakura began yelling orders on how to treat the wounded. Ultimately, she was still their angel of mercy, her mussed pink hair flitting from person to person as she did what she had trained to do for so long.

The foreman was glancing at Gaara in awe, having clearly witnessed two of Gaara's new powers only one of which Gaara himself had been largely aware of possessing to that extent. "I needn't tell you that what we witnessed here today was a collective delusion."

The man was silent, eyes so wide the whites dominated the sockets.

"Or the consequences should any other story reach my ears."

The foreman shook his head violently, a hand tracing back up to his lips.

Gaara sighed, satisfied that there wasn't any other seismic activity to speak of, and allowed the migraine that he suspected would lay him out the rest of today and tomorrow begin to take root in his mind. Dust filled the air around him again quickly, but he found he didn't have the stamina to do much about it other than watch it obscure his vision of Sakura.

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He was sitting at his desk, slowly reading through documents about the aftermath and blinking hard against fatigue he couldn't hide. Gaara should have been laying down. After nearly giving himself a stroke two days ago in the mine, Sakura had calmed the swelling in his brain that might have still been the death of him had she not been a particular kind of doctor. She had been forced to take a break today due to her own exhaustion as well as concern for Gaara's condition. Additional help had been brought in for the injured, at Sakura's insistence and Gaara's expense, to ease her agitation at being unable to continue to see to the wounded. Her vision practically blurred as she tried to sit upright in her favorite chair and only managed a slump.

Sakura felt grateful, but moreover she felt _obligated_.

Now that he had saved her life—again—she wondered what she could give him. She had already offered herself in a sense, pledged to service that seemed casual enough on first glance but they had never spoken of an end date or of the possibility of her leaving so she had the feeling that she could announce one day she meant to leave and Gaara would wave her away. And that would be the end of that. It was a lonely feeling that made her involuntarily clench the material of the cravat near her throat.

There was still something she could offer him, but she wasn't convinced that was a thing he wanted from anyone or if she was whole enough emotionally to follow through. Then again, she had never asked his preferences. Tired as she was, she didn't want to be alone and conversation would be welcome. Perhaps she could come at the question sideways.

Setting down the book she had been poorly pretending to read given she could barely focus her vision, Sakura broached a question she couldn't have asked before the first winter snow had fallen, "Do you think you'll marry eventually?" She followed her question with a nervous cough from a suddenly dry throat. So much for subtlety. It wasn't really one of her gifts.

There was another measured blink, and Sakura would have thought she hadn't been heard but the terrariums stirred. He was getting better at control, but was too tired to hide his agitation. She was grateful and yet also terrified that his strength so far outpaced his ability to regulate his affinity.

"I'm sure my siblings will assure the bloodline will continue." He had taken the question seriously! Anything other than outright ignoring her was an invitation so far as Sakura was concerned.

"I don't see why you discount yourself. Other than a few character flaws, which is to be expected in any man, you're not without qualities that could be considered attractive." Tiredness was similar to drunkenness a part of her brain supplied helplessly, but Sakura forged ahead past the claxon sounding in her mind. "Dedicated. Punctual. Talented. And your appearance is…"

Normally he ignored her rambles, eyes fixed on his business, but Gaara pinned her to the chair with the weight of his bloodshot interest. "My appearance, Doctor?"

"It's ah, rather, that is to say," Sakura had thought she was the one making him uncomfortable but as always he turned the tables effortlessly. "Passably handsome. Severe in a way most young women won't find approachable but your vast variety of frowns grow on an individual after a time."

The attempt at levity was lost on him as always, but he seemed to catch on to the joking tone and dismiss the entire topic as some attempt at humor. They had crossed swords over this matter before, with Sakura insisting he learn how to take a joke and Gaara replying that it was a form of manipulation that never served him consistently. The idea that a younger version of Gaara had tried to tell a joke and failed only to abandon it altogether up into adulthood had been too rich.

"I'm not interested in most young women," Came his vague response, then another tight scowl as he fought the pain in his head.

Before she knew it she was on her feet, crossing the room to stand next to him and put a gentle hand on the nape of his neck. Her fingers brushed the skin between his hairline and his cravat and she felt the goosebumps rise on his skin, but he didn't jerk away as she used her abilities to again reduce the swelling in his brain and sinus cavity. Just a little more, she willed her body's reserves… but when Gaara's shockingly firm arms caught her from her descent to the floor she knew it had been too soon.

He twisted awkwardly out of his chair, supporting her weight as he rose while she tried to tell her body her legs were not in fact boneless. Gaara managed to maneuver her into a semblance of a hug and Sakura sighed as her chin hooked over his shoulder.

"You should be sleeping in your bed." He sounded angry, but as he pivoted to sit Sakura in his chair, still warm with his body heat, he was gentle enough.

"So should you." Was her faint retort. "You almost died with that ridiculous display and your body is telling you to stop. You should listen to it."

Gaara's face was too close, as he made sure she was comfortable in the high-backed chair he practically lived in. "My body should respond to my will, not the other way around." The way his fingers slid from her shoulders felt reluctant and Sakura wondered if she was imagining it because she had wished so badly to find a way to relate more closely to this man she mostly admired. "Nothing good could come of changing my ways now."

He didn't comment on her hypocrisy. And when her head sank to the cool surface of desk out of pure exhaustion she was sure she felt a warm hand rest on her back for a time. Sleep definitely happened in a position that her body protested greatly upon waking, but it was the coat that wasn't her own that she observed sliding off of her onto the floor that seemed even more out of place.

Sakura smiled fondly in the direction of the man who had clearly cared enough about her to be concerned for her while she slept. As she took in his thoughtfully blank expression as he etched his correspondence from a hunched over position at the side table by her own chair she realized something: she didn't just want to offer him something more of herself to Gaara out of mere obligation. Sakura wanted to feel the warmth of that hand that had been on her back on her skin instead.

"Damnation…" she murmured seemingly to herself.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, suddenly Naruto. But I feel like that's the kind of guy he is. Also, while chronological it isn't fully linear per se... so forgive the abruptness. It was intentional and possibly did not work in the manner I meant it to, in retrospect.

When Sakura had bodily dragged her brother from the dining room last night in front of his curious and amused siblings, Gaara knew that he should be grateful this foul-mouthed blond ruffian had only gotten two syllables of Sakura's name hissed out before she had pulled him into the hallway with a yelp. Naruto today was tapping his fingers and bouncing his legs like he was ready to vibrate out of the drawing room chair and only his eyes darting to the door gave Gaara any indication why they hadn't already come to blows. Sakura would be back any moment, having left the room with many grave warnings to her brother not to make a further ass of himself. It was the kind of candid discussion between two relatives that he had never exactly longed to have with his own blood, but it implied a certain closeness to their relationship that Gaara instantly envied. Not that he wanted Sakura to ever look at him with such fury, but the passion in her eyes did stir something he was unwilling to name in him.

Clearly the smirk that he had been unable to contain was antagonizing the man, he noted with satisfaction. It was impossible not to feel superior when Sakura had in no uncertain terms outlined her plans for an indefinite stay in his home regardless of what her brother thought was proper. He would say he felt buoyant, but the atmosphere in the room was unbearable what with the constant pressure changes stirring his hair and popping his ears. Uzumaki had a wind affinity, Sakura had warned, a powerful one that had gotten him recruited into the navy as soon as he had turned sixteen. But apparently under enough emotional duress his control was not what one could call complete.

"She feels indebted to you, I can see that, but I know she's been bamboozled and I'll convince her of it at some point! I might have felt differently if she were set up properly like the lady she is instead of being forced to lie—"

Gaara held up a hand, wincing a little as his left ear popped but the right seemed unwilling to follow suit. "Let's define that feeling, Mr. Uzumaki. You're saying that you object to my providing a home and employment to Dr. Haruno who is, admittedly, a rare talent. But would you really prefer the idea of _Miss_ Haruno making her rounds among the miners and foremen, day in and day out?"

There was a way Naruto flinched as Gaara painted a picture Naruto hadn't considered up to this point: Sakura surrounded by all sorts of unknown men. Clearly, she hadn't shared the full truth of her interesting new limb or Gaara wouldn't be able to effect the man so baldly with lurid suggestions. Sakura would be insulted that he was painting her in such a vulnerable light when she was anything but, yet something about her brother made him want to twist the knife. Knowing he was susceptible to this train of thought was valuable ammunition.

"Perhaps you would prefer that when she is alone in her office treating the maids and… footmen… that she do so as her authentic self. However, I think you'll find there have been no lies propagated by myself regarding the doctor. If the doctor prefers to dress in men's clothing for the time being, that is her business." It was so strange to use pronouns aloud in regards to Sakura. Regardless of what anyone thought, he had never actually said Sakura was a man… he had simply allowed the household to assume she was. There was enough plausible deniability that if Sakura wished to reverse course from the agreement they had made half a year ago and reclaim her natural sex that it would be technically possible.

Suddenly the proximity of her room to his own would be cause for even more speculation than it already was, for all neither of them spent much time in their beds and none at all in each other's beds.

It would probably also mean more tiresome visits from Sasori who was writing with extra venom about Gaara's supposed pet physician even as his cousin carefully avoided the manor for the time being. That bit of good fortune was likely to run out soon. Particularly once the spring recess concluded and the parliamentary committees came together to make a final decision about 'this messy slavery business' as some of his board of directors whispered about as if it were the tolling of a bell. Perhaps they would come to a vote, more likely they would table the decision another few sessions. Sasori was busy lobbying in town, his letters scolding Gaara for not doing the same.

"I don't know what happened in that carriage accident she said you saved her from, but I think you're both hiding something from me." Naruto was brash, but there was something canny in him as well. Gaara supposed you couldn't be a fool and rise so quickly in rank at sea. "I don't set sail for another week, and I'll be damned if Sakura's still in pants by the time she sees me off."

It was so easy to press his buttons, Gaara noted. He could see all the places to wind him up and make him rage, like a muscly automaton in an ill-fitting jacket. "I suppose I should be grateful you're not insisting I do the honorable thing."

Uzumaki inflated, red faced, like a bellows just as Gaara had hoped with a glee he knew he was imperfectly hiding, while Naruto's wind whipped around faster. Temari had a little wind affinity but nothing that could pose a particular threat—she more often used it to cheat at lawn sports than in any real martial capacity. What might a fight be like with Sakura's brother? Would his newly refined powers be enough to stave off a trained military man?

"For god's sake, Naruto!" Sakura entered with a decanter of alcohol in one hand and several glasses in the other. "Cut it out before I box your ears! I feel like my eardrums are near bleeding!"

At once the wind ceased and papers that had been swept up from a small writing table in the corner fell about from the ceiling onto the floor along with a pen and a small clock that gave a mournful twang as it no doubt ticked its last.

"I'm sorry my brother is such a walking disaster," She set the alcohol in front of Naruto and poured him a generous glass which he snatched up with a sour expression. "Obviously I will pay for the damages. I had thought we could all have a drink together and maybe a bit of civil discourse but maybe I was too optimistic."

Naruto mumbled something into his glass before he downed a healthy swig of the contents of his cup.

"No, you are most certainly an asshole here Naruto, though don't think I missed how you were preparing to do what with all that sand under his chair… Mr. Sabaku." Gaara startled, almost shocked at himself even as he wanted to shrink down under Sakura's baleful green gaze. How had he called so much earth without conscious will? He had been barely fantasizing about breaking a few bones in the heat of battle and possibly reality had been closer than he imagined. It was sobering and he hadn't even had a drink, even if he politely accepted the glass from Sakura. "Now we're going to toast to my brother's safe return and my employer's health and hospitality. Got it?"

"Yes, Sakura," was all both men could mumble.

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"Growing up must have been an adventure." Temari murmured in Sakura's direction, and the two of them watched as Naruto got ready to knock Gaara's croquet ball as far away as possible with his own. The actual wickets had been abandoned by the two men in favor of a childish rivalry they couldn't contain. "I have rarely seen my brother so…. Animated."

"I apologize if their antics are ruining your garden party, I suppose it was too much to hope when you extended the invitation that he wouldn't embarrass me." Sakura watched as Naruto crowed with pleasure as Gaara's red ball careened deep into a flower bed. It was payback for how Gaara had sent Naruto's yellow ball into a small pond in the previous game.

The gentleman next to them who was leaning hard against his mallet with a yawn stepped up to take his turn while Naruto was taunting Gaara over his inability to locate his ball. With a smooth motion, the man knocked his green ball through two wickets. He was well positioned to win yet again. The competitive part of Sakura grumbled a bit, but she bit it back.

"Nicely played, Mr. Nara. Is croquet a particular favorite of yours?"

Temari snorted, "He only plays it when I make him."

The dark-haired man appeared amused at her dismissive comment, "As the lady says."

"I think you need to spend less time tinkering, and a bit more time out in society in general so you don't lose perspective. Even if activities like this seem juvenile." Temari was not so gently chiding the engineer.

The man grumbled something to himself, but the smile on his face widened. Sakura wondered if his visits to this household were partially to be scolded by Temari, because his words of complaint and his manner were misaligned.

Out of the corner of her vision Sakura saw a streak of red launch out of a gardenia bush and narrowly miss her brother's face. A sudden breeze stirred her hair as she saw Gaara's smug expression and Naruto's displeased one. If the blond idiot had been a little slower he'd probably be getting treatment from Sakura for a concussion. Whatever Gaara had done to achieve that sort of velocity with mere dirt was honestly impressive, but had also fully disqualified him from further play.

Temari's strike against her purple ball almost brought her up to Mr. Nara, but she caught a side of the wicket and it took a right when she needed a left. "I'm starting to regret our friendly wager earlier."

"Come now, how bad can it be to play maid for the afternoon? You've poured a cup of tea before." Sakura struck her blue ball but it fell short of even Temari's and the lady of the house was quick to quip back.

"Looks like I won't be the one to serve the tea and cakes this afternoon, Doctor." She glanced where Naruto and Gaara was nearing one another with stiffening postures, Naruto's voice rising in volume. "Although I might be willing to give you a reprieve if you can keep our brothers from engaging in violence before lunch is served."

With a sigh, leaving Temari and Mr. Nara to decide the winner amongst themselves, Sakura wandered over and fully pulled her brother back a step or two by the back of his jacket. Judging from his sputtering accusations, he wasn't able to find his ball due to a rather miraculous coincidence of it falling into a highly localized sink hole and he was accusing Gaara of foul play. Gaara was coldly ignoring Naruto's words even if his guilt was obvious.

"Naruto, before you haul off and get a shovel to retrieve your ball I think you'd be better suited to playing fetch over the hedge for the red one. Meanwhile, Mr. Sabaku I think your sister would appreciate it if you didn't destroy her croquet set. Whatever burial you just gave that ball I'd appreciate if you could reverse it?" Her words were calm, totally ignoring how Naruto was in the middle of a one-sided argument.

Gaara rolled his eyes but tightly nodded.

"How about you come with me… _brother_." Naruto grit out before he grabbed Sakura by the arm and hauled her away. She was grateful that he had grabbed the left one because the strange firmness of the right one would have been easily noticeable. There were things she couldn't quite yet admit to her beloved sibling. If he knew the atrocities she had been subjected to he would desert the navy in pursuit of vigilante justice against the mad doctor. It was bad enough her life had been nearly ruined, she didn't need to drag Naruto down with her.

They looked around behind the neatly trimmed ivy-covered wall. The red ball had followed a general trajectory in this direction but she hadn't marked it closely. Mostly she had hoped that a concrete activity would help Naruto calm his temper before they sat down to a meal at the outdoor tables Temari had arranged. Mr. Nara seemed to spark something in the older Sabaku sibling that was markedly more feminine than her usual interactions. She had fussed over the food, fussed over the placement of the tables and chairs, fussed over the weather, and Sakura felt deep envy at the new dress Temari had specifically donned for Mr. Nara's entrance. It had been a year since Sakura had been in anything resembling a proper dress.

"You can always come home." It was gently said, almost wistful.

"To what purpose." Her reply to Naruto was flat, an expression of her disappointment in her personal path even if her professional one was rewarding in its current iteration. "I'm of use here and even if people back home could grit their teeth to be treated by a lady doctor, what if they couldn't? I have an entire village of people I can help, substantially so."

Naruto's face darkened, "They're slaves, Sakura. Whatever debt you owe to that monster, he's no benevolent lordling. And from where I sit you're as much as slave as the rest."

He didn't know because she hadn't told him. How she owed Gaara her life, how she lived on borrowed time, how he allowed her to feel something akin to normal in a body that was anything but. "All you know is what I've written in a few letters, and the wild imaginings of people that barely know this family."

"Maybe it's you I don't know!" Naruto was angry, and when he pulled up from his crouched position next with the missing ball in hand she was totally unsurprised when in a fit of temper he threw it full force in the opposite direction.

"Mature as ever, I see," Her temper was rising to meet his, falling into familiar childhood patterns. Naruto would push, Sakura would push back. "And maybe there are things you don't know about me, but what can you say about your past few years at sea? Are you going to tell me that you're the same person who swore to me you're be an admiral by thirty? You can't lie to me, I've seen your new scars and I know life hasn't been as peaceful and bloodless as _your_ letters would claim, either!"

They stared each other down and after a moment of rage she sensed that Naruto was a bit stricken by her words. He had sought to protect her from the ugly parts of his life, but maybe their mutual decision to only show one another the socially acceptable side of themselves had done more to push them apart than preserve a good opinion of the other. Perhaps it was stupid to think that she could hide the worst of herself from the person she should be closest to, even after years apart.

"When you're ready to tell me the truth about your life in the navy then I'll be able to tell you about this," Sakura pulled off her right glove and allowed Naruto to gawk at her dully shining metallic hand. To further illustrate she wandered over to a small ornamental plum tree and squeezed a low hanging branch until it separated from the tree. Showing the pulped mass that had once been part of the branch, she wiped it off on her pant leg and replaced her glove.

Naruto eyed Sakura in a way she didn't like, there was consideration there. If this was the way he assessed enemy ships before a battle, she wouldn't have been surprised. "It must have been quite the carriage accident."

"Very likely you'd find the truth unbelievable. But suffice to say, I owe that man you appear to hate more than I can say in a letter."

Naruto sighed, running a hand through regulation shortened hair. "I don't hate him. I hate that you've chosen him over your home." His electric blue eyes held that sincerity that she remembered well even if the innocence of past days was gone. "And I've seen a few more unbelievable things than you, I'd wager, so maybe that pneumatic hand of yours is less shocking than you think."

Despite herself she laughed. "Pneumatic, you say."

"I know a sailor with an engineered leg, it's rather impressive though he goes through a prodigious amount of oil especially with all the salt spray…"

He was falling back into humor, the intensity of moments earlier stowed away if not forgotten. The way his eyes kept darting back down to her right hand told her that there were other thoughts floating through her brother's mind that he wasn't ready to share. While he was no doubt now dying with curiosity about how she had acquired it, the price appeared to be too steep for the moment. His life in the navy was no doubt more brutal than she suspected, but she could outlast her sibling for stubbornness and the terms had been set. All she had to do was wait, and in the meantime prepare herself for retelling her own tale.

In the short term however, "So what do we tell Temari about her croquet ball?" her words interrupted Naruto in mid-tale about the one-legged man and the tricks he had pulled using the poor fellow's detachable leg.

"If your employer is half as good at sensing the earth as he claims, I'm sure he'll be able to find it," Naruto sounded a little bit bitter.

"Mr. Sabaku isn't the bragging type. When did he say something like that?"

Naruto made an airy gesture, "You can just tell he's thinking it, the bastard. He probably thinks he's better than everyone around him, too."

If it was a matter of ego, Sakura was sure Naruto and Gaara could stand toe to toe. It was probably why they weren't getting along so well. Surely, they must have something in common that she could use to bring them together. It wouldn't suit to have them at odds like this on a permanent basis if she intended to continue her residence in this household.

*  
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*

When Naruto produced a dress from absolutely nowhere to present it to her in her improvised office, Gaara had the pleasure of seeing all the cards drop from Sakura's boneless hands. It seemed they would not be finishing that whist game today. However, the entertainment factor of whatever was to follow was compensation enough for an interruption into the enforced relaxation time that Sakura insisted he take from work periodically. Neatly gathering up the cards as Sakura got up from her seat, he felt a tiny spark of compassion as Uzumaki's smile faltered while his sister bore down on him.

"What in all the hells have you done! Where did you get this? Did anyone see you bring it in?" She looked torn between covetousness and rage. Her ungloved fingers tore into the box and ran over the yellow cotton.

"I just thought that you needed a bit of encouragement to set things back on their natural course."

Sakura looked like she was vacillating between wanting to stab Naruto with her cravat pin or hugging him. "And I suppose you aroused no suspicion at all when you sauntered into a dress shop and no doubt paid too much for…" She trailed off as she brought it out. Gaara didn't know much about women's clothing, only that this didn't look like something someone of Sakura's class would normally wear. Yellow was also not a color that he associated with his doctor, having seen how her taste aligned with his own color palette when they ordered waistcoats many months ago.

They were all silent for a time except for the rustling of fabric when quietly Sakura rose and with a shaking hand placed a key in the lock. Gaara's stomach dropped before his mind began to process the inevitable. Naruto gave a whoop, clearly already understanding what was on his sibling's mind. Gaara realized with dawning horror about a minute later as there was a scraping against the hardwood while the privacy screen that lay next to a cot in the room was drawn into the corner.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll get out now," Naruto bore down on him, still practically frozen in place in his seat next to the card table. He didn't need to be told twice, and as soon as he was standing with a dazed expression in the hallway he heard the firm click of the key. It was reassuring. It was exasperating.

Cravat, waistcoat, shirt, pants… articles of clothing he imagined were tossed onto the top of the screen as his unwelcome inner vision foraged in the recesses of his mind for memories of the recent past. Gaara found himself focusing intently on a crack in the wall. He had seen Sakura in compromising situations before, and a dim reflection resurfaced and replayed itself in his mind. How tiresome the discovery had been at the time and now the increasingly clear vision of her naked body seemed unable to dislodge itself from the back of his eyes.

Naruto nattered on through the thick door about how he'd had to guess at her sizing and how clever he had been to say he was trying to get a surprise gift for a cousin or something similar even as he whined to her about needing to change right now and couldn't she just wait until later. Even Gaara knew it was ridiculous, based on Naruto's lack of duplicitous ability they probably figured he was buying a gift for a mistress. The ominous silence from his sibling, coupled with some rather unladylike grunts and what Gaara could only describe as a ripping noise were punctuated by weak supplication for Naruto to shut his mouth.

"This has a bustle you idiot!" Perspiration breaking out on the back of his neck, Gaara spared a look down either side of the hallway as if he were a scout for an important tactical maneuver. No one was in sight, nor would he expect anyone as typically to encourage privacy for the doctor's patients the staff was told to only come this way to perform weekly cleanings. Sakura tidied her own office to her own standard of sanitation.

"So?" Naruto's footsteps were pacing around in those heavy boots he favored, like a guard dog against Sakura's supposed modesty. If she were truly modest she wouldn't be changing her clothing like this, even if the only man truly present was related to her by blood. Did she think so little of Gaara as a man that she was untroubled by his proximity? Pride continued to aggravate and intensify his already unsteady grasp on his emotional state. What had started out as a small crack in the wall that he had been concentrating on had what looked to be sand leaking out of it. Consciously, he forced it to stop. His control was breaking around the edges these days, and he wondered at what point his earth would act out his unconscious desires with dire results.

"I look like a deflated hot air balloon. Among other difficulties." Her tone was unlike her. Gaara didn't like the mournful edge to it. His Doctor Haruno was resolute and confident, and this version of Sakura warbled with disappointment.

Naruto soldiered on. "It can't be all that bad. You've always been like this. Is it the color? I can get you a different color—" Were they even aware that he was still within earshot at this point? They were acting as if he wasn't. Uzumaki wouldn't want him there. Gaara was unsure he wanted to be there as well.

"It's not the color! The dress is fine it's me that—" There was a rip, and then silence again. More fabric rustled and even Naruto seemed to get the idea that he needed to keep quiet because his pacing intensified.

The eventual scraping of the screen cued Gaara in to the cessation of this farce and after a brief scuffle, the lock clicked.

"Next time you get inspired to do something like this, get long sleeves." Sakura's voice was susurrus, meant for Naruto alone but in the quiet hallway it wasn't hard to pick it up. The vision of water sluicing down her naked body, beading down her metallic arm, dripping from her ragged hair—it was impossible to banish it and Gaara watched with growing alarm as the sand began to trickle through the crack again and struggled this time to stop it. Blood pounded in his ears, and he felt overcome by shame. Where was his control?

His mind and body seemed to be rebelling. Sakura opened the door, her brows creased and mouth set in a firm frown that softened a bit in concern when she looked him in the eyes.

"You look flushed," fingers were approaching his forehead and Gaara's hand darted up to halt its progress by a clothed wrist. She would know as soon as she touched him what his body was doing, and he couldn't have that. It would change everything and he couldn't bear the disgust she'd no doubt feel. Gaara wasn't sure when her respect had come to mean something to him, but the possible loss of it was a keen ache in his chest.

He cleared his throat, and it was loud to his own ears. "It's too hot on this side of the residence in the afternoon. I should order heavier draperies to keep out the sunlight before summer arrives."

Shrugging and backing away, Sakura took her seat back at the card table to reshuffle the cards and occasionally try to readjust a hastily retied cravat. The pin wasn't meticulously centered any longer and more than anything else Gaara was bothered by that detail.

"Shall we play a game all together?" Sakura looked over where Naruto was no doubt stuffing the ruined dress back into the box it arrived in. He could tell from the occasional swear word and the rustling of paper. There was some eventual nondescript assent from Uzumaki and Sakura turned weary eyes Gaara's way once more.

He hadn't moved from the doorway. With a lopsided grin that looked forced, she tried to put him at ease. In his heart water was still falling just as he could sense the stubborn trickle of sand in the hallway. Gaara was a dam about to burst, and he felt the beginnings of a headache as he continued to resist.

"I'm sorry you had to be here for that. I don't know what came over me." Her voice was companionable but she wouldn't look up from the repetitious movements of her hands shuffling.

After ten measured breaths, Gaara allowed himself to step back into her domain.


	9. Chapter 9

It had either been late or early when Sakura vaguely heard Gaara head to bed, and it was that same half-awake fugue state that she awoke in when a keening cry was suddenly cut off down the hallway. She didn't know she tore the doorknob clean off her door until later, all she could process as she literally fell out of bed in a tangled heap and scrambled up towards the sounds of danger was a punishing terror that she was already too late. Bare feet thumped down the hallway until she reached Gaara's room and barged in. The fact that it was unlocked became immediately relevant, even if it hadn't seemed strange when the only directive her mind could process was to get inside.

Blood splatters were everywhere, two large tendrils of sand twitching near Gaara like vines that had sprouted through cracks in the floorboards. One of them became immediately recognizable as the responsible party of the blood because it was twisted around the limp and lacerated body of what was no doubt an assassin based on the dark clothing and the facial covering. Curled into a ball in the corner, fingers slowly and repeatedly scratching bloody grooves down his cheeks, Gaara appeared to be staring into nothing and murmuring to himself. The wide smile on his face was gruesome, made worse by a new shower of blood over his hair and face from the flopping body. His eyelids fluttered for only a moment at the splatter, but the sand tendril didn't stop writhing.

It didn't take long to assess the carnage, but Sakura stayed as still as possible for long moments. She wanted to move towards him but something about this situation was familiar in a way that made the present fade to a point before expanding back out again to the sound of her rushing blood in her ears. The man in the tendril was beyond help and Gaara…

"Mr. Sabaku!" A footman was rushing towards the door, possibly drawn by the persistent thumping as the body hit the wall or the floor occasionally.

"Don't!" Sakura cried and turned to push the man out before slamming the door closed. The idea that someone else could be hurt moved her to action in a way that a danger to herself obviously could not. The way the footman had hit the wall sounded severe. She probably put more strength into it than she meant to, but she would have to attend to him momentarily as the protracted groan from out in the hallway told her he yet lived. "Don't enter this room unless I say so!"

The tendril not clutching the man shot out at her now that she was making her presence active inside the room and she sidestepped in time to see it puncture the wall near her neck. It bifurcated at the tip several times over until it was a mass of pitchfork sized spikes and it continued to attempt to spear her while she dodged. Her knee hit the floorboards hard as she rolled and she wished she had practiced more acrobatic moves recently. While not old, she certainly wasn't imbued with the elastic resilience of childhood and there was nothing to cushion her fall but the thin summer nightshirt she had fallen asleep in. It was a good thing Naruto had visited not long ago, as the brush up on her boxing had been well timed for this adventure. Bare feet were an asset as she nimbly dodged what would be a rather bloody end if the tendril caught her in the chest like it was attempting. Mindful of not slipping on a pool of blood, she used her affinity to coalesce it around the outline of her foot instead.

Seeing an opportunity, Sakura threw an uppercut as the tendril attacked and the hardened sand spikes exploded at the force of her punch. Momentarily she was blinded from the powder in the air, and she was glad she never stopped moving even as she blinked the sand away because the tendril reformed easily and again split to resume their dance. It wouldn't tire, and it wouldn't let her closer to Gaara and his prey so she needed a different solution unless she wanted to retreat from the room entirely. Somehow, retreat felt like a nonstarter, so Sakura focused her mind.

Catching sight of the pitcher that had been set out for face washing, in the corner, Sakura took the chance of sidestepping over to grab it and toss the contents on the thin tendril before landing another punch that scattered the damp dirt in clumps about the room. Then with a twisting mental wrench as it reformed, dark and heavy with absorbed water, she thrust out her left hand to grasp it and willed the water to still itself. Typically, her actions commanding water were more closely aligned with the circulatory system that guided it in natural flow, or interactions with cellular systems that communicated with chemical signals that she could spark. This action to still her element was unnatural to her, a bald exercise of power that gave her an instantaneous migraine. Sakura used the window of opportunity she had created to bypass the tendril and rush to Gaara's side. Clapping her left hand against a temple wet with blood that wasn't his, Sakura frantically tried to bring Gaara back from whatever internal nightmare he had descended into.

"Gaara, look at me," Her force of will wasn't as great as Gaara's and she could feel her hold on the water slipping as the tendril sluggishly inched towards her, stretching thin to reach her and blindly defend against the danger she posed. "Come back, Gaara!"

He wasn't remarkably hurt, she could sense that from a cursory investigation of his body through the link of their skin, but the man she knew also didn't seem to be present. His eyes were open but he had retreated somewhere mentally she couldn't follow. Healing the body was one thing, but there wasn't a healer on the face of the planet that could bring a person back from the brink of insanity. Had he always been this unstable? By all accounts he had appeared to be a bastion of control. He was the one who steadied her, who grounded her when she felt like she was mentally floating away. The idea that Gaara might be fragile stunned her, alarmed her in a way that was deeper and more primal than simply avoiding physical injury like she had moments ago.

Sakura could sense it before it pierced her skin because of the water that it dragged with it, but just the same her first reaction was to wrap her body around Gaara's protectively before the slim pointed end of the tendril pierced her side like an arrow. The pain was immense and she was already sending signals to her organs to start repairing damage even as the curses flowed past her lips. With speed and force, the tendril had managed to pierce all the way through her, the tip of it stabbing Gaara as well. The pain seemed to jolt him, and watering green eyes finally trained themselves on her form curled above and around him.

The tendril withdrew quickly then and dissolved to the ground as the thump next to them alerted her to the dissipation of the second tendril as well. The damage her inanimate combatant had left in its wake was remarkably painful. Prioritizing her own organs, Sakura fell back on the floor bleeding freely and forcing her breathing to calm as she concentrated on the internal perforations. It wasn't unlike the bullet wounds she had treated in the past, working quickly to stimulate cells in multiple places in the body to repair themselves. Pistols at dawn was still something that young and stupid men engaged in, and Tsunade's clinic was well regarded enough by the aristocracy while being discreet enough to keep the law at bay such that she'd seen more than one of those wounds. It was different when it was your own body, though, and she fought through the pain and incoming shock.

Slim trembling arms were around her, pulling her into an embrace even as she bit through her own lip as she forced herself not to bark out her displeasure. This wasn't helping, and she cracked open her eyes to take in her wild-eyed employer. Bloody grooves down his cheek oozed, and this close the smell of blood on him was overpowering.

"Where are you hurt?" His expression was still panicked and his body was shaking but his voice was filled with the lead weight of command and Sakura realized why she never suspected his weakness before. She supposed if they waited a few more minutes he might even have his body under control as well from an outside perspective.

"Shut up and stop moving!" Sakura ground out as her hand automatically eased over the hole in her side as if that alone would stop the blood flow. "Listen to me carefully," Taking a deep breath around the pain, Sakura tried to imbue her words with more authority and less whine as she grit out orders. "You'll need to clean and treat your wounds. There is a man outside of your room who probably needs to be treated for a concussion. Do not let him sleep. Order some of the other footmen to make sure he's monitored."

Eyes narrowed, Gaara took in her words but tightened his hold on her body despite her entreaty to halt movement. "You didn't answer my question,"

She would laugh if it weren't so painful to even consider the chain reaction in her abdomen if she allowed such a thing to happen. Talking about her injury was a losing prospect. Unless he wanted to answer some truly awkward questions, there was no way she could allow anyone else to treat her either. Simply lifting up her nightshirt to examine the wound would be a revelation for the household.

"This is nothing I can't attend to with time, but I'll need your help to keep others at bay while I patch us back together."

Gaara interlaced his fingers with her metallic ones and she felt the pressure on her heart as well as her hand.

*  
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"It's easy now," Gaara said in response to her question as he contemplated the closed blinds in Sakura's room. "It comes to me before I even think on it. Like an arm reaching up to scratch an itch." The heat was oppressive given her current temperature, but it wouldn't do to open the blinds until the afternoon had passed so Sakura slowly fanned herself and felt beads of sweat pool anywhere skin pressed against skin. The crook of her elbow was a particular annoyance.

Perhaps it was like lifting weights. At first heavy weights take effort but the more often you practice the more minimal the effort becomes. The earth that responded to Gaara's will was like a trained dog for him now. There was no way to stop the slight tinge of nausea as the serpentine motion of the dirt across the room from them gently pulled aside the blinds to allow some of the late spring light into the room. It dissolved into nothing, dropping them back into relative darkness as the dirt slithered back beneath the floorboards.

"You're disgusted by me."

It was impossible to fully refute. Nothing that reminded her of Orochimaru would ever bring her joy, especially so close to the one-year anniversary of her imprisonment. "We aren't fully defined by any one part of our nature."

To spare him obvious facial scarring she had healed the self-inflicted scratches on his face, but his torso was still bandaged as she hadn't had the energy for his deeper wound. Nothing important had been punctured, through either luck or self-preservation. Despite her best efforts, she was still fighting infection from whatever unclean elements had been in the dirt Gaara had speared her with. While she could control many of her body's responses, some things still needed to take their course without her interference for the sake of conserving her energy. Foreign invasion, as with sickness, was sometimes better left to nature's constructions in her blood to purge. It happened to her rarely enough to be novel and she needed to stay wary in case they were attacked again.

"I asked if you could control it," Sakura reminded him.

Gaara wouldn't look her way, and stood slowly from the chair that had been placed next to her sickbed. "I am always in control of it, but it's largely commanded by desire not reason."

It was an admission that made Sakura sigh. So it would always do what he wanted it to, not what he necessarily asked it to. What a terrible gift. If Gaara were less scrupulous or more consciously aggressive he would be a constant danger to anyone who so much as displeased him. A whim based in anger could easily cost someone their life. Sakura weighed on the side of trust in his state of mind out of loyalty if not experience, but recent events painted a strong streak of doubt down the middle of her thoughts.

"What of your limits? Surely there is a difference between sensing your surroundings and taking action to mold them?"

Gaara strode over and examined himself in the mirror that lay in a corner of the room. She could see his face partially reflected back, and thought on how dour he seemed. Even for Gaara, there was a gloom that clung to him that Sakura worried about.

"I need to be in visual range, based on my experiences thus far. The closer to my person the stronger my connection to the manifestation." His eyes met hers through the mirror before he tilted it away. "I had only thought to protect myself from the initial attack. I felt the shifting of the earth and braced myself as if to create a shield and then I saw the knife and I knew I needed a weapon." The simplicity of his words was deceptive.

He had created a weapon. And had used that weapon to perforate his attacker like a needle would pierce cloth. Then practically showered in the blood. There was a significant percentage of the story missing from Gaara's account, but it seemed impolite to imply instability so soon after the incident. After all, the moment he had realized his surroundings the anomaly had ceased.

Better to change the subject, clearing her throat, Sakura picked up her half empty water glass and tried to casually segue. "Any leads on who sent this man to harm you?"

One quick amused exhale told Sakura her attempt at changing the subject was pretty obvious as Gaara walked back over and grabbed the pitcher of drinking water to refill her glass. He had been attending her for several days now and Sakura wondered in what way this would fuel speculation about their relationship. It seemed a damn shame she had to live with all the knowing looks without having the benefit of any of their gossip being even remotely true.

"I suspect my cousin. If it were the mad doctor surely multiple agents would have been employed to attack us simultaneously. It isn't the first attempt on my life in this household."

"I dare say it's the most dramatic," Sakura mumbled and drank her water. "So why now?"

"Possibly politics. He's been unable to remove me as head of the company. Perhaps he has debts I'm unaware of and thinks to benefit from a settlement at my death." Gaara took the glass from Sakura's hand, refilled it once more and took a sip from it. He may have thought nothing of the gesture but it made her burn hotter. He wouldn't notice a reddening of her already flushed cheeks so she tried to school her features. "He hates me. It could easily be a fit of pique."

The only callouses on his hands were from writing and those smooth fingers ran over the uneven surface of the glass. He contemplated it and Sakura wondered how it might have been if he had known her family when he was younger. She certainly wouldn't have allowed him to spend so much time underground with his father, and there would have been many more forced conversations with his siblings. Maybe sneaking a boat out with Naruto or swimming competitions that she would promise not to cheat at and then clearly and dubiously win. Shared meals. Laughter. What touchstones of humanity did he really have?

"I think it's time we visited the city and had a tete-a-tete with your cousin."

Gaara looked at Sakura with every ounce of doubt in his heart. "You must be joking."

"Do you see a smile?" She tapped his arm with a metallic finger as if she needed more of his attention than she was getting. "You sit here in this mansion and simply wait for things to happen to you. I think it's about time you took some initiative."

Tired eyes rolled in his head at her words. "My last attempt to take initiative as you so put it resulted in attempted murder as well so I fail to see why I must face such tedious experiences away from my own home."

Knowing that she wasn't going to get anywhere with goading him for his inertia, Sakura shifted tactics. "You haven't turned up any leads on Orochimaru, have you? I'd also like to talk to my fellow physicians. I have a few compatriots that I think could have promising leads, but they aren't the type to exactly respond to correspondence. Nor do I trust our letters to remain private given Orochimaru's habits."

His grip was tightening on the glass, she could see his white knuckles. Yes, assaulting his pride was a better way to get what she wanted.

"And perhaps I would like a chance to be Sakura Haruno for a few weeks rather than Dr. Haruno…" It was quietly added. The finishing touch that both defused and confused him. "I have friends in town that can provide me a wardrobe to borrow… a minimum of questions asked."

After this there was nowhere to go other than 'you nearly killed me it's the least you could do' but luckily Sakura saw the tension drop from his frame and the glass was gently placed back on the table by her bedside with a dull thud. The sigh he let out was from the depths of his spirit. "I will make arrangements. There is a house in the city. It can be made ready for our arrival. I suppose 'Doctor Haruno' will be inexplicably indisposed and Sakura Haruno will be staying with friends?"

They couldn't reside together, unmarried and unaffiliated as they were. Unless they wanted a rather juicy scandal to entertain society in the middle of the Season they would need to be cautious. Even if Gaara was beneath most people's notice due to lack of sociability, he had money and that meant some mothers somewhere had him on a list as a viable target and therefore he would be invited places. Someone would take note of him and who he was seen with.

"I have just the friend in mind. I'm sure she can meet us at a suitably discreet location to make the switch." Patting the back of his hand with her own, she saw him flinch. She still wasn't sure how one moment he could be so casual with her, and in the next be so sensitive to her movements. "Don't worry, I won't subject you to an entire trip without some relief from your motion sickness."

Slowly shaking his head, seemingly trying to stifle a smile, Gaara quickly flicked his glance up to meet her fever bright eyes. Sakura put on her most convincing smile. They could accomplish this. She could have a chance to meet her friends, enjoy some social time as a lady again, and gather intelligence on the man she wanted to crush with her bare hands. Her optimism would sustain them even as Gaara's doubt radiated out of him palpably. Gaara could control the monster inside of him, and maybe getting away from this dark house would ultimately do him good. Sakura had to believe in him, the dogged loyalty she had sworn demanded no less.

"This will work. Haven't you always wanted to put the fear of god into your cousin?"

"The only god Sasori believes in is himself. But perhaps you're right and the time has come to remind him he only lives due to my mercy." Gaara balled his fists tightly and then released them slowly. There was a flash of movement out of the corner of Sakura's vision and she wondered if his steady breathing was a form of meditation to calm himself and control his powers. Her fear spiked momentarily before Sakura focused in on his face and preternatural calm swept over her. Affection was a terrifying thing. It went against everything logical, everything instinctual, and left her with an unfounded certainty that she could trust this man. Even after she had been skewered by his powers.

With a sinking feeling spreading through her from her heart outwards, Sakura repeated her earlier words with slightly less vigor. "This will work…"


End file.
